Childhood's Lament
by Montelimarie
Summary: In a moment of desperation Toby makes a birthday wish to return to the Underground, and Sarah is determined to save him again. But does he want to be saved? Does she? JS but complicated see CH. 1 for details
1. We Meet Again

_Sarah lost her childhood in the Labyrinth. She realized that the world wasn't made of fantasies and glitter when she turned down the Goblin King. She set herself in her ways - as ordinary as they may be - and tried not to think of the day her childhood died, tried not to hear the doleful lament still humming in her soul, mourning the loss of youthful wonder._

**Plot:** On his sixth birthday, Toby makes a birthday wish to return to the Underground and Jareth allows Sarah one last chance to say goodbye to her brother before Toby takes up permanent residence as the Goblin Prince, and heir to the throne. Sarah still fears Jareth and, after her ordeal five years previous, the Underground itself - but she is determined to save her brother from the web of lies and tarnished promises brought on by the Goblin King before it's too late to turn back again.

**Romance? **Yes. Jareth/Sarah, though if you're looking for vows of love between them and blind romance, this is not the fic for you. Jareth is angry, Sarah is scared, and both of them are too proud to admit too much.

**Disclaimer:** I don't know why I bother with this sort of thing, but I don't own Labyrinth. I do, however, own the original characters (NO, THIS IS NOT A JARETH/OC FIC! DON'T WORRY!) that are to come in later chapters.

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**Chapter 1 **

Rain poured and lightning flashed outside the large home of the Williams family. Sarah Williams stood holding a plate with a single cupcake on it in one hand while the other clutched a misshapen object wrapped in newspaper. She pounded on a bedroom door as thunder rumbled in the distance, building itself up before tearing through the house with enough ferocity to drown out Sarah's words as she shouted pleadingly to her brother.

"Toby, will you please come out?"

"No!" Toby's voice was loud and hurt, though muffled through the wooden door of his bedroom. He also sounded like he might've been screaming through a pillow, but it was hard for Sarah to tell. Another clap of thunder muffled more knocks on the bedroom door.

"Come on, Toby. Your candle's melting- it's gonna mess up the cake." And, indeed, the single birthday candle that was placed in the chocolate cupcake was nearly halfway melted. A great glob of green wax rested on the chocolate icing and Sarah wondered if it'd still be alright to eat. In fact, she wondered if they'd be eating it at all.

But Toby would have nothing to do with it, "I don't care!" the little boy screamed. Quieter, he added, "I can't believe they missed my birthday. It's no fair!"

Sarah let out a hopeless sigh as she slid along the doorjamb and onto the carpeted floor. Leaning her head against the door, her voice seemed more desperate and sympathetic than it had before.

"Come on, Toby… Do you know how many birthdays of mine they missed? Of course it isn't fair. And you feel bad for a while, but it isn't the end of the world. I have cake, and a present- we can have your birthday now."

Sarah cast a glance at the clock on the wall, its pendulum swinging and clicking rhythmically as it ticked the seconds away. It read 9:37 PM. The young woman smiled as an idea filtered through her head, "Hey, Toby," she said excitedly, "If you come out in the next five minutes, you'll be able to blow out your birthday candle the exact moment you turn six!"

Toby opened the door to his room and Sarah nearly fell over. The little boy let out a small laugh, "Presents?"

Grinning, Sarah sat up straight again, and just as she moved the candle went out. She shrugged and said that she could light it again later, "I want you to open your present first, anyways," she stated, and pulled a shapeless lump of wrapping paper from behind her back.

Toby took the gift, already having the gist of what it was but still feigning excitement as he tore the paper off of it. When finished, he held a small ceramic statue of a short, stumpy, slightly disfigured looking humanoid.

"Oh! It's Hoggle, from your stories!" he smiled, genuinely liking the gift. It was a bit of a shock, to any onlooker, for a six-year-old boy to like anything like the statue, but Sarah knew it'd bring a smile to Toby's face.

Sarah nodded as she crossed the hall and opened the drawer in the little table that sat underneath the wall clock, the cupcake plate in hand. She removed a little plastic disposable lighter and flicked it to life, re-lighting the candle before tossing the lighter back into the drawer. "I'm sorry about all this, Toby. I really hoped they'd be here this time… But I'm glad I'm here."

Toby inspected the detail on the statue and shrugged nonchalantly. "Hey, when're you going to make me a Jareth statue? I have three goblins, Ludo, Sir Didymus and Ambrosius, and now I've got Hoggle, so when are you going to make Jareth?"

Sarah frowned and sighed as she sat cross-legged in the middle of the hallway, setting the cupcake on the floor between her and her brother. Sometimes she wished she'd never told those stories about the Labyrinth to Toby - he seemed to believe in it all even more than she did, but they always made him feel better, so she thought it was all for the better.

"I have to wait for more time first. I work a lot, you know- I don't always get the spare time I need to make things, and Jareth will probably be the biggest project out of all of them. That'll have to be a really special day."

"What about on Christmas? That's special, right? What about then?"

Sarah grinned and looked up at the clock. Thirty seconds left. She pushed the cupcake towards Toby, "Make a wish."

Toby nodded and set the Hoggle statue to the side, it made a light 'thunk' as it hit against the floorboard that lined the hallway. He closed his eyes and focused, then opened them again and blew out the candle with as much relish as if it had ten or twelve brightly burning flames, rather than just a single half-melted and faltering candle. Sarah clapped happily, but her celebration was cut short by a sudden blast of thunder and flash of blue-white light through the hall window. The lights flickered on, then dimmed and shut off again, and a scratching noise was heard outside. A scratching noise that sounded all too familiar to Sarah's ears.

"Toby, what did you wish for?" Sarah asked quietly as an ominous fear clenched her heart.

Toby looked around with the glee of a six-year-old boy caught up in something spectacular, like a ride at Disney Land or a scary movie. "I can't tell you that, or it won't happen!" he said with stubborn belief.

Sarah turned to her brother sharply, "Toby, just, please, tell me what you wished for!" she cried, resting a hand on his shoulder as a fluttering silhouette banged against the distressed glass of the large window.

"I wished the goblins would take me away."

The window burst open and Sarah glanced back for a single moment, hardly a heartbeat. It was still enough time, however, for the feeling of her brother's shoulder beneath her hand to disappear into that of thin air. She swung back around and the hall was empty except for the cupcake and the Hoggle figurine lying forgotten near the wall.

"Not again," she whispered, as a shadow cast over her and a rush of cold air chilled her spine.

Five years, since Sarah had taken her trip through the Labyrinth. She'd thought it nothing more than a dream, a small little fantasy that she had when she wanted to escape from reality. She was a teenager then - she was hotheaded, she thought the world was against her, and she'd had one too many missed birthdays. Then, she blamed it on her brother, but she realized that it wasn't his fault at all, that it was her job to protect him and keep him from feeling that pain of isolation that she'd felt all throughout her teenage years.

He was disappointed at a young age, though, and it seemed that, as he became more and more aware of the world around him, he was getting harder and harder to protect. So she shared her little childish fantasies of the Labyrinth with him. She made him figurines and told him all the twists and turns that the Labyrinth had - all the twists and turns it made in her life. She told them like she believed them to be true, though she long since stopped believing it'd actually happened.

She'd grown up, she thought. She'd left it all behind.

Now, as she stood staring at the silhouette of the figure before her, the reality came rushing back. It was real. She'd lived it, for real. She'd been there, when the Goblin King took her baby brother away, and she was here now, five years later, a grown woman, and he'd done it again. He'd tricked her again.

She was standing up, now, but she was leaning against the wall for support. The lights flickered momentarily and Sarah caught a glimpse of his face.

"You haven't changed a bit," she said with disbelief, her voice a small, insignificant little thing against the roars and rumbles of the thunder outside.

"You have," he replied, his voice the same conceited, cocky voice that she remembered. It sounded a bit angrier than it had then, though - a sharp, razor edge barely detectable by anyone who didn't know what they were looking for. She supposed she was the cause of that. He hadn't been happy the last time they'd seen each other, after all.

Sarah stood up straighter and walked up to him, curiosity glinting in her brown eyes, just as it'd been five years before. She looked up at him, and he looked down at her. The window was still open, so rain spattered the walls as well as Sarah herself. Jareth smirked lightly and blinked, and the windows shut with a snap. The lights flickered again, covering the hallway in a dim, yellowish glow.

"What this time?" Sarah asked, "Another trip through the Labyrinth?"

"Sarah, what could you possibly be talking about?" Jareth said coolly, staring at her with sparkling, icy eyes. His lips turned back in a little half-grin.

"What do you mean?" she said, her voice rising to a hysterical level, "I'm talking about Toby! How do I get Toby back this time? I didn't wish him away - you can't have taken him!"

Jareth chuckled, and it sent shivers down Sarah's spine. Despite having defeated him five years before, the Goblin King still frightened Sarah out of her wits. She still woke up in the middle of the night with nightmares of him haunting her dreams. She'd put off making a Jareth statue for her brother out of fear, not out of pressed time.

She was just a coward, even when she thought it'd all been fantasy.

"You can't get him back," Jareth said bluntly. Contentment was obvious in his voice.

"What do you mean, I can't get him back?!" Sarah advanced on him, her eyes wide, "I have to get him back! You have to let me get him back! You-"

"I don't have to do anything!" Jareth shouted, the aversion that Sarah had been hearing throughout the entire conversation finally bubbling to the surface. His eyes flashed with a red fire in the light, like the reflective eyes of a Siamese cat, only much, much more horrifying. "Toby wished himself away. That means that Toby must get himself back… If he even wants to. You, my dear girl have nothing to do with it!"

"What?" Sarah stared at Jareth in shock, "Then why are you even here? Why didn't you take him and just leave?"

The smile returned to the Goblin King's face as he composed himself, leaning against the wall as he balanced one of the infamous crystal orbs on his left hand, the right one tucked casually across his chest.

"Come now, Sarah," he said with a mocking laugh, "you can't have expected me to drop by without saying 'hello' to the girl who nearly ruined everything for me, now could you? I mean, we had such a fantastic connection, you and I, I thought you'd be ecstatic to see me again!"

"What do you mean, '_nearly_ ruined everything'?"

"Oh, that." Jareth shrugged and tossed the crystal into the air, catching it with one hand and making it disappear instantly with a flick of the wrist as he paced across the width of the hallway. "Well, when you did that whole trick with the words, I was a little down for a while. The goblins were set free, the spell was broken, but, you see, I had myself a way back up. I _am_ the King, you know, and you can't just get that sort of position out of luck or circumstances... I have my own powers, and I used them to rebuild. For, as you probably know, no great ruler is really great unless he can take nothing and make something."

Jareth stopped in front of the window and smiled proudly to himself, "And, if I do say so myself, I think I've made quite a something - even better than before, in fact. And I've been waiting all this time, for you."

"For me?"

Sarah stared. It was all she really could do. Her voice sounded foreign to her, her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton. All she could think about was Toby. Poor Toby, lost in that world again.

"So that I could show it all off," Jareth said cheerfully, matter-of-factly. "So that I could show you, just once, where your little brother will be living and, hopefully, ruling later on in life." Jareth grinned and walked to the other side of the hall, "Because, after all, it'll be the last time you ever see him. I figure it'd be chivalrous for you to say goodbye."

Sarah blinked, tears brimming her eyes at the thought of never seeing Toby again. "Why? Why Toby? Why me? There are so many other people out there, why did you choose us?"

Anger glinted in Jareth's eyes again, red and flashing like a fire that's gone out of control. Another rumble of thunder, menacing when coupled with the look on the Goblin King's face, "I gave you a chance, Sarah, to live in the world of your dreams forever. You threw it away like the spoiled brat you are, in exchange for what? A normal life, working at the theatre as a stagehand, dreaming of the day you'll make it big like your dear mother? A life of disappointment, of disgrace, of sadness: you traded all I offered for this?

"I'd never offered any of that to anyone before. But you were special, Sarah. You had the imagination, the yearning for something more in your life, and, of course, you had Toby. Toby isn't just a normal child. He's destined for great things, and I wanted those great things to be an asset to my kingdom…" He paused, "And, I wanted you to be my queen… But I suppose you can't always get what you want, now can you?"

"I was fifteen," Sarah cried. "You can't have expected me to make that sort of choice when I was just a teenager!"

Jareth laughed coldly. It was amazing how he could go from fire and brimstone to icy callousness so quickly. "You were old enough to wish your brother away with enough desperation to call on me, Sarah… That's a lot harder than you think."

Sarah moved forward so that she was only a foot or so away from the Goblin King. "I was angry. I – I didn't mean it, not really! You just caught me at a bad time… You caught _Toby_ at a bad time… That's it – he didn't really mean it either. He was just angry, like I was."

"I know," Jareth said with a knowing smile as he looked at Sarah, who had suddenly been reduced from beautiful, strong young woman to a fear-filled teenager in mere moments.

"I know, because I watched. I waited, Sarah, until the most opportune moment, and then I took young Toby away. I waited until he was so angry at his parents that he made the same mistake you did five years ago. He believed in what he said."

"What do you mean… you watched?"

Jareth leaned in close, so that Sarah could feel his breath on her neck as he spoke, and it caused goosebumps to sprout up all over her skin.

"What a lovely dress you wore that day, Sarah," he said slowly, softly, almost threateningly. "What a pity it got ruined in the rain."

Sarah's eyes opened wide as she remembered that day. She remembered the day she finally called on the goblins to take her brother away. The day in the park as she rehearsed with her dog Merlin… She'd spent hours getting ready, styling her hair and perfecting her makeup. She remembered the park – how, one moment, it was a beautiful, clear day, and the next it began to rain… She remembered an owl, perched on a tall statue and staring at her with such intensity as she said her lines that she thought, at one point, it could have been human.

But it hadn't been human at all…

It'd been him.

Sarah backed up quickly and nearly fell. Fast as lightning, the Goblin King's gloved hand caught Sarah by her wrist and suddenly it felt like her entire body was submerged in icy water - in the sort of cold that seemed to numb you and burn you simultaneously.

He pulled her up to him so he could whisper in her ear, "It's time to say good-bye, Sarah."

And then, darkness.


	2. Falling

**Short chapter/dream-sequence! Enjoy. (:**

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**Chapter 2**

Everything was swimming in flashes. Masked courtiers, grotesque and beautiful simultaneously, danced around the ivory ballroom. The ballroom itself was unfinished – half-pillars like melted candles were tossed around in disarray with no thought to architectural integrity. Chandeliers, dripping with clear crystals and covered in gaudy carvings, gave Sarah the impression of over-enthusiastic grandeur. Young Sarah. Fifteen-year-old Sarah lost in a world of immorality, wearing a pure white gown of innocence as she looked on to the cavorting dancers.

What was her purpose? Why was she here – an innocent amongst many ugly sins. What brought her to this place among all other places, this place that she most obviously did not belong to? No matter how she tried, she would never be able to dance like them, with their chaotic steps and turns like windstorms, falling away into a world of transgression, all the while their faces turned up in laughter that even they didn't know the target for.

Then she heard the music… It was lilting and beautiful, flutes and strings and a trance-inducing melody. She caught a glimpse of him as he lowered his mask and Sarah's breath caught in her chest. This was why she was here. _He _was why she was there. In his blue tux, bright and vibrant and wonderful – blue was the color of royalty, of the ocean and skies – the most standard forms of wonder and beauty. He moved like the ocean, or perhaps like the clouds swirling in the sky, like wind and silence and all things wonderful. He was as beautiful as the music she heard – perfect and charming, the ideal Prince to her Princess.

Then he was gone.

Frantically, Sarah searched the ballroom for her prince. She pushed away the dancers one by one. They danced rapidly – off beat to the music that Sarah heard. The innocent music that whispered through the laughter and drowned out the earnest fear that she'd been feeling… Why had she been feeling that?

Sarah stopped for a moment to think. She wanted to remember what she'd been so afraid of. Questions swam dizzily through her mind as she wondered and thought, but no answers followed them. Perhaps they simply just didn't matter – perhaps all that mattered was what was happening at that moment, the strings in the song and the lilting flutes… But still, she felt that fear in the pit of her stomach like a heavy stone and she wished nothing more than to be rid of it.

Then she heard his voice, and it no longer mattered. Nothing mattered, except him.

Sarah started again on her search for Jareth. She looked in all directions, but ever half-pillar and chandelier looked the same. Every dancer pulled her and pushed her and laughed horribly in her face, at her dress and the pearls that were entwined in her hair. She didn't wear a grotesque mask like they did, and they laughed at her for that folly. This was, after all, a world of ugliness and Sarah was anything but ugly.

She could feel herself breaking down; feel the hopelessness setting in as she almost collapsed in the center of the ballroom. What was she to do? The dancers spun themselves into blurs of dark colors and Sarah drunkenly looked on as faces turned to little more than fanged countenances, still grinning horribly like they couldn't stop the maniacal feelings that bubbled up through their bodies. Sarah could feel the tears stinging her eyes, blurring her already blurred vision, when she felt a presence at her shoulder. She turned around, and there he was.

He put his arms around her and all was right in the world. She could no longer feel her feet or her head, or feel the fear she felt before. All she felt were his hand in her hand, and the other on her waist. All she knew was the world in his eyes. All she could hear was the voice that came from him and from nowhere at the same time. The voice that spoke of love and eternity and promises that Sarah didn't hesitate to believe.

_Falling, falling in love… _

All that mattered was that he held her. The rest of the world could go to hell, so long as Sarah danced with him.

His face was as beautiful as she'd expected, his eyes alight with love and wonderful secrets that Sarah wished to know. His lips moved and his voiced seemed to dissolve into her mind and heart, echoing through her soul. Her fear was whisked away as if by a comforting wind, and the laughter began to fade into the back of her mind.

Slowly, he smiled. It wasn't the charming smile that she loved – it was a wicked smile of deception.

As if newly learning to focus, Sarah began to hear the laughter again. The music started to dull and the laughter grew into a raucous din. She could feel his hand holding hers all too tightly, and her heart began to beat faster and faster as his lovely eyes turned to darkness. She could hear a clock chiming

_One… Two… Three… _

Sarah ripped her hand from his and tore away from his hold. The dancers all turned to watch her, their gaping mouths in twisted mirth as Sarah looked somewhere – anywhere – for help, but no one turned to help her.

_Six… Seven… Eight…_ the clock boomed, each chime getting louder and louder in Sarah's aching head.

With a gasp, Sarah remembered. Toby. He had Toby. He'd given her thirteen hours… She remembered.

_Nine… Ten… Eleven_… Time was running out!

Sarah ran through the laughing, cackling crowd. She reached the clock and stared at it. There was a mirror behind it, and she could see herself - her ball gown, the pearls in her hair. She was ready for a party, but it was just a trick. He wasn't in love with her at all. She had to save Toby, and her time was almost up.

"_Time to say good-bye, Sarah," _he said softly.

Sarah opened her eyes wide as she stared at her reflection. It wasn't right. _She_ wasn't right. None of this was.

_Twelve… _

It wasn't Toby she was meant to save, after all. It was herself. Sarah stole a glance back at Jareth, who looked at her with a calculated, monitoring look like a scientist watching a lab rat run through a series of tests… Except, unlike a scientist for his rat, there was a look of hatred on the Goblin King's beautiful face.

_Thirteen…_

The clock had run out.

Sarah was all out of time.


	3. And now?

Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Sarah lay in the state of awareness that was halfway between awake and asleep. She could smell the musty odor of earth and felt the constricting discomfort of stale air - it was a combination that she'd known only once in her lifetime, and it wasn't a very fond memory.

She was in an oubliette.

"_It's a place you put people… to forget about them,"_ a friend had said once upon a time.

But Jareth had promised to let her say good-bye to Toby and if the Goblin King was good for anything, it was keeping promises. So she really wasn't meant to be _forgotten_ here until she said good-bye to Toby…

She hoped.

Sarah opened her eyes and realized that she'd been laying flat on her back. She could see the vague outline of the door, at least twenty or thirty feet above her, and the little holes that'd been stabbed through it so she could breathe. It was like being caught in an earthen bottle, being in an oubliette. In here, she was just a piece of Jareth's collection. God only knew who else he had trapped in one of these...

She turned to the side and slowly sat up. Her head was pounding and her body was aching… had he actually just let her _fall_, unconscious, all that way? It was such a long drop that Sarah was lucky she didn't get any permanent damage. But he probably cushioned her landing somehow… He didn't want her dead, after all… At least, not yet.

Glancing around, Sarah noticed that this oubliette wasn't like the one she'd been in before. That one had candles, some furniture, and a door (though the door wasn't always attached to the wall) in it. This one was nothing more than a hole in the ground; the only light coming from the punctures in the door above her. In that light (or lack thereof) Sarah could see the real roughness of the oubliette – rocks, roots, and even the skeleton of some creature or another dappled the earthen walls.

She just had to wait. Sarah stood up and tilted her head back, staring at the little holes that were so far away. White light filtered through them, enhancing floating dust particles and only making a few splotches of the oubliette visible to Sarah's eyes. How long would she have to wait? Surely, with all Jareth's powers, he knew she was awake by now?

"Hello!" Sarah croaked. Her voice was muffled from the tight space and all the earth around her, and even if she screamed on the top of her lungs she doubted anyone up there would be able to hear her.

With a half-hearted desperation, Sarah struck at the packed, dry dirt with her fingernails, trying to carve handhold into the clay-like earth but to little avail. She attempted to use a root as leverage and pull herself up, but it did little more than displace some of the sand. Climbing up an oubliette would be like climbing up a sheer rock face, only less secure and less friction. Impossible.

Sarah sighed and dropped her gaze, tossing the root she'd pulled out onto the ground and scuffing her feet in the little piles of loose sand. She looked back up and spun around, squinting into the seemingly eternal darkness and past the shafts of light. Straight ahead of her, on the other side of the oubliette, she saw a dull shimmer beyond the swirling dust particles that filtered through the light beams. Curious, Sarah took the few steps it required to cross the width of the hole and touched the area where she'd seen the glint.

A bright, blinding light erupted from what looked to be a perfect orb that'd been shoved halfway through the soil. Sarah shut her eyes tightly as a tornado-like wind began to spin around her, the shifted earth creating painful sandstorms that raked across her skin. She remained still out of instinctive fear as her sense of direction disappeared - there was no up, or down, or left or right, but all of it was happening to her at that moment. She could feel her hair stand on end, her feet leave the ground, and the sensation of falling, falling, falling…

Then, nothing. She sat, her legs splayed in odd directions and her arms covering her head protectively as she braced for impact, but there wasn't an impact at all.

It was then that Sarah realized her jaw was clenched so tightly that her headache had worsened. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and it wasn't until she opened them that she could tell that tears blurred her vision as well as clumps of sand. She rubbed her face, brushing away dry sand and the mud created by a mixture of her own tears and the sandstorm of the oubliette.

She sniffled and looked at her hands - her fingernails were broken and her fingertips were cracked and slightly bleeding from her attempt at climbing out. The palm of her left hand was scratched four or five times (presumably from the root she'd tried climbing with) and still bleeding, though some areas were clotted with sand.

"Sarah!"

She sat up slowly, only to be bowled over again in a comforting hug. Sarah wrapped her arms around her brother and almost broke down sobbing… How could she leave him again? They'd grown so close in the past five years. She'd become more of a mother to him than their own parents – how could she just leave him here, in a completely foreign world with Jareth?

But Toby was ecstatic. He broke away from Sarah's hold and it was then that she saw the elaborate robe her wore over his jeans and striped polo shirt. There was a small sword at his belt, edge dulled but surface polished to mirror-perfection. If he'd been wearing a crown, Sarah would've really thought he was a prince.

"Sarah, look at this sword! Isn't it cool? One of the servants gave it to me. They said it was a gift from the King. Isn't that cool?"

Sarah wiped the tears from her eyes and sniffled again, putting on a wavering fake smile for her little brother. "Y-yeah. That's… great, Toby."

Toby was unaware of her little lie as he was too busy stabbing at imaginary foes with his very un-imaginary sword. He made sound effects and his own theme music, which was incredibly off-beat, and faked killing an entire imaginary army before finally falling dramatically at the hands of some lucky opposing force.

Sarah smiled sadly and looked around the room. She couldn't watch him. She was afraid she'd break down crying in front of him if she did, and she didn't want to do that. Instead, she took in the elaborate gold and green decorations of what looked to be a small throne room. She sat on several embroidered pillows while Toby had been fighting over mountains of them, as well as a golden throne that he'd used as a shield while attacking his imaginary enemy. Sarah sat in a circle in front of the throne that was about a foot lower than the rest of the room and everything was finely polished and draped in exotic fabrics like velvet and silk.

If this was the inside of the Castle beyond the Goblin City, it was nothing like what Sarah had seen during her brief look inside. Then, it'd been all dirty sandstone walls and ugly goblins living in filth and squander… Unless, of course, Jareth really _had_ changed a lot of it once she'd left.

"Sarah," Toby said before tapping her on the shoulder, "were you watching me? I did this really cool dive when I fell this time!"

"Don't do any dives with that sword around you, Toby," Sarah said in a mothering tone. "You'll stab yourself."

Toby rolled his eyes, "It's not a _real _sword. I can't actually stab anyone with it."

"You'd be surprised, Toby. Be careful."

"Did you just come to yell at me or something?"

Sarah's mood dropped considerably as she pulled Toby close in a one-armed hug. "No," she said, trying to keep her voice from breaking, "I came to say good-bye."

"But you just got here!"

"I know, Toby, but I can't stay. You didn't make the wish for me… I have to go back."

"What if I make the wish for you to stay, too, then? I wish-"

Sarah clasped her hand over Toby's mouth, "No!" she shouted. She calmed down a bit before adding reassuringly, "I can't stay here, Toby… Not forever."

In truth, Sarah just knew she wouldn't like being the property of the goblins and the Goblin King. Jareth had already put her through hell – what would he do if he practically _owned_ her? He wouldn't hurt Toby, because the six-year-old was meant to act like a son to the King and meant to be the heir, but Sarah had crossed him multiple times since they first met, and she doubted he'd feel any sort of remorse at turning her into a goblin, or banning her to an oubliette forever.

Sarah heard a humorless chuckle from the corner of the room and turned to find Jareth leaning against one of the highly embellished walls. The sight of him made her scalp prickle with fear and she clutched Toby closer to her out of protective instinct.

"No, Young Tobias, your sister can't stay," Jareth said with an amused grin at the look on Sarah's face. There was a lilt of mockery in his voice before he added, in a much colder tone, "She gave up that right a long time ago."

Toby stood up, wrenching himself from Sarah's grasp. "I want her to stay!" he said loudly. "You said that I could have anything I wanted here, and I want my sister!" He brandished his harmless sword at the Goblin King and Sarah suddenly felt a new streak of fear cross her heart at what Jareth might do to him.

There was silence for a while as Jareth looked at Toby contemplatively. Toby's sword lowered curiously as the Goblin King didn't react to his half-threat. In the way of a six-year-old boy, Toby's initial anger dissipated and his attention turned to more demanding things, such as trying to spear one of the many pillows with his sword.

But Sarah's fear of Jareth ran deeper than Toby's and she watched carefully as the King pushed himself away from the wall and flicked his wrist, making one of those dreadful crystals appear on his fingertips. Sarah gulped – what if Toby wasn't as protected here as she'd thought? Would Jareth use that crystal against her brother?

"Remember this, Sarah?" Jareth said lowly as he edged closer. His eyes weren't on Toby, and Sarah figured that was a good thing.

Despite the fact that pillows appeared to have been tossed haphazardly about the room when Sarah first arrived, there was now a clear path of polished wooden floor where Jareth was walking.

He glanced at the crystal, "I told you this was your dreams. I offered it to you and you threw it in my face like the ungrateful wretch you are…" He stopped a foot or so away from Sarah and looked at her sharply. She could see the glint of anger in his eyes, but he suppressed it. She supposed it was for Toby's sake, though the boy had moved further away and was ignoring the Goblin King's low, threatening voice altogether.

"And now your brother wants you to stay," Jareth said, his knowing smile escaping into his voice, "and I can't break a promise to him... So I suppose you have to stay... But, dear Sarah, you won't be staying in the world of your dreams."

With a quick, lightning-flash motion, Jareth's smile turned to a snarl and he tossed the crystal into the air. It hovered several feet above Sarah, glinting in the light that shone through the tall, elaborate windows before it began to expand then drop, slowly, until Sarah was encased entirely in a glass globe.

Sarah looked at Toby, who had turned from his latest game to stare at her with mouth agape, and then back at Jareth. The Goblin King's smile was sly and his head was slightly tilted as he waited for his spell to fall into place.

It didn't take long at all. In a heartbeat Sarah could see nothing but white, fiery light and in another, the light was gone. The globe was gone, and Sarah inspected herself for any changes. At first, when she saw that Jareth hadn't turned her into a goblin or something worse, Sarah thought the spell hadn't worked, but then she looked at her clothes.

While she'd been wearing jeans and a t-shirt upon her arrival in the Underground, Sarah was now wearing what looked to be a long, dingy pillowcase made of a thick muslin material that reached a little past her knees. A coarse rope tied around her waist and a dirty-feeling bandana kept her long, dark hair from her face. Her feet and legs were bare except for a strip of leather around her left ankle, though she didn't know why.

Jareth chuckled, moving to circle around her like a cat staring down its prey. "To think that you could've been a Queen," he said quietly so that only Sarah could hear, "and now you're a servant… A very pretty servant, mind you, but a servant nonetheless… I could have turned you into a goblin, but I didn't want to mar that beautiful face of yours."

He reached out to touch her cheek and Sarah flinched away. His only response was to drop his hand and frown at her, a dangerous though indiscernible sparkle in his eyes.

"What did you do to her?" Toby said with awe. His sword had dropped onto one of the pillows and he stared at Sarah a child would stare at a particularly fascinating magic trick done at his birthday party.

"I didn't do anything to her," Jareth responded, glancing at Toby for a moment before turning sharply back to Sarah, his voice low again. "I just… outlined her true place in this world. The beautiful girl that I'd chosen to be my queen… The girl who I offered everything to, only to have it thrown back at me without as much as a second thought."

He edged closer, tilting Sarah's chin up as he looked her straight in the eyes. She didn't flinch this time, but she glared at him and clenched her fists at her side, fighting the urge to strike him simply because she knew it would be pointless.

"You could have been everything, Sarah," the Goblin King whispered, "and now you're nothing."


	4. Questions

**Okay, before anything, I'd just like to give a little shout-out to **FaeriesMidwife **because she's been incredibly supportive of me. I urge you all to go read her Labyrinth fics and review excessively.**

**And on another note, I'm very, very glad that many of you like my version of Jareth. I never liked the fics where he's nice because, I mean, he wasn't nice in the first place - why would he be nice after he totally got DENIED? **

**Anyways, I hope you enjoy this one. AND REVIEW. Tell friends, family, co-workers, random strangers on the street, FEED MY EGO. **

;D

P.S: I know it's not Friday, but.. you know.. close enough.

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**Chapter 4**

Dark stone, black and polished finely like obsidian glass, crystals and silver touches here and there embellished ebony wood – a door, and a mirror built right into the wall. A circular court, a circular room in the highest tower of the New Castle. An oval window, distressed and warped due to the glass being hand-manufactured, looked over the great city below. It was still being rebuilt. Jareth could see little figures moving about, lugging large stones that had been displaced five years before when Sarah and her friends had torn through the villages without a thought other than to save precious Toby. Beyond that city, however, was the famed Labyrinth… That was the first to be rebuilt – even before the Castle itself – and Jareth was the only one who rebuilt it.

Jareth had fashioned the Labyrinth the same way he had before. He projected his powers into it. He gave it a life of its own – a life that only he knew how to rein, and the Labyrinth was even stronger and more difficult than it had been previously. Ever-changing, forever alive, eternally impossible… Somehow, Sarah was going to find her way back into that Labyrinth. Jareth could feel it. He knew that she would try anything to escape this world and take Toby with her, but Jareth wasn't going to allow it.

The Goblin King sat on his throne in a casual position, one leg thrown over the opposite armrest as he leaned his head against the winged back and gazed out the distressed window. He didn't know why he found it so fascinating to watch the City, but ever since they'd started rebuilding he found himself in that room, staring out that window more and more often. He loved to watch the sun set, to watch it send glorious flashes of light over the knots and divots in the glass as the horizon was set in a blaze of red and orange. He loved to watch the Labyrinth as is moved, breathed, shifted and formed to make itself all the more difficult. There was always a path in that structure that never changed – one that led directly to the Castle gates – and Jareth was the only one who knew that path.

Slowly, Jareth stood up from his throne, edging so close to the window that his breath sent little circles of condensation over the glass. He looked at that Labyrinth, at the impossibility of it, and smiled.

Sarah had completed the Labyrinth previously. It hadn't mattered how many distractions he made for her, she still made it through… That was why he'd wanted her to be his queen. He knew she could succeed at anything he threw at her… though she hadn't done so with such a stoic bravery as she did now, under her current circumstances. He hadn't heard a complaint from her since she'd been made into a servant, and he'd expected her to fuss and whine as much as she had five years ago. Perhaps she'd changed more than he'd thought?

But, no – she hadn't changed that much. She still had the headstrong naivety that he'd loved about her then.

Jareth stopped for a moment, pressing a gloved hand against the warped glass of the window as he gazed unseeingly into the dusty horizon. Love. Did he love Sarah Williams? Did he think about her? Yes, he did. Did he care about her, in any form at all? Yes, he supposed he did – it was vague, but he did.

But also, she fascinated him. Like an experiment, like an object of study. He found wonder in the way she thought about things, about how, even as a teenager, she believed heartily in magic and goblins. She'd been devoted to the story of the Labyrinth, enthralled by its myth and… had she been in love with its creator? Had she loved the Goblin King?

That question would have to wait for another time as a tentative hand knocked on the large, dark-stained door of the room. If it hadn't been for the complete silence in the throne room, the knock probably wouldn't have been heard at all.

"You may enter," Jareth said as he moved around to the other side of the room and sat back down on the dark throne. He took on a more professional posture than he'd used before, but he continued to focus on the scenes outside the window.

A servant girl, the one who shared sleeping quarters with Sarah, entered the room. She was a goblin – but, judging by her lack of crudity and quiet impishness, she was a Changeling – one of the children stolen from human communities like Sarah's and turned into a goblin servant.

Changelings had long, sharply pointed ears, large earth-toned eyes, and white, feathery hair. They were always small and thin, and had waxy white-green skin; many outsiders would think them weak and frail creatures, but Changelings were perfectly capable of defensive magic and could easily lift things well past their own body weight. Changlings generally held a slightly higher rank than the regular Goblin population, and they were only found in the castle. No Changeling was allowed to leave the castle gates.

"I-I'm sorry to disturb you, K-King J-J-Ja-Jareth," the servant-Changeling sputtered. Jareth usually made a note to remember the names of all the Changelings in the castle, but at the moment this girl's name was evading him. Tholly? Thistle?

"The acceptance of that apology depends on _why_ it is that you disturb me," Jareth said without looking at her. He studied his hands for a moment, then returned to watching the rebuilding of the Goblin City.

"Uh-uhm.. right. Sir. Your Majesty. King," she continued earnestly. Jareth cast a brief glance at her and noticed that she just couldn't stand still. She picked at her long, thin fingers and twisted the little bits of white hair that had escaped her dingy bandana, her bare feet spinning and swinging as she did anything to avoid looking at the Goblin King. "Uh… um… T-the new girl. Sarah? S-sh-she wants to speak with you. I told her that it couldn't happen – that you only s-spoke with the Upper-servants, but she insisted, only she didn't know where you could be found and no matter how many times I gave her the instructions her she kept getting lost, and so I came here instead to deliver the message and maybe if you could let her speak to you, maybe you could give her a little time?"

Her last words came out in such a quick, breathless pace that Jareth took a few moments to decipher what she'd said. Thistle or Tholly, whichever it may have been, bit her lip with the bright, pure-white teeth that were consistent with all Changelings, and wrung her apron in her hands as she stared at the stone floor.

So... Sarah wished to speak with him? Jareth found mild amusement at the thought. They hadn't spoken – or, even, seen – one another since the day he'd kept his promise to Toby and 'allowed' her to stay in the castle, about two weeks ago. So what was it that she wished to talk to him about? Her freedom and Toby's as well, no doubt…

"Very well," Jareth said slowly. The Changeling-girl looked at him for the first time with wide, dark brown eyes of disbelief. "I will allow Sarah to speak with me. You may bring her here just before sunset."

Without another word, the servant girl bowed out of the room and closed the door behind her with a hollow thud that reverberated in the silence of the throne room. Jareth stared out the window at the falling sun and tilted his head. He'd never answered his own question earlier… Did he love Sarah Williams?

No, he decided. Probably not.


	5. Perspective

**Alright, everyone - here we go. Chapter five. I'm a little late putting this up because I forgot what day it was... for three days... well... whatever. Anyways, to those of you who are worried about Jareth's last sentence in Chapter 4, don't worry too much - it'll come into play again later. I won't be ripping the rug out from the LOVELY ROMANCE just yet.**

**Please review.**

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**Chapter 5**

Sarah sat on the mattress of straw and feathers that was the sad excuse for her bed as she listened to Thilia's summary of her meeting with the Goblin King. Sarah hadn't told anyone that she'd met Jareth before, and neither had he, so when she'd asked to speak with him Thilly was utterly shocked. After all, _no one _spoke with the King. A wrong word and you could be damned to spend the rest of your life wandering the Labyrinth, trying to find a way back to the City, or beyond it, though no one really knew what was beyond that web of stone and hedges.

No, they were all quite content in their little shells, hiding from the wrath of King Jareth and hiding from any whisperings of truth or disbelief. They closed their minds from anything out of the ordinary. To them, if it wasn't Law, it simply did not exist. Frankly, their total willingness to just give up disgusted Sarah. Was it always like this – even before she'd rejected Jareth? Or was this part of the 'change' Jareth had created for his new world? A world of creatures and subjects who didn't doubt him and didn't question him? Sarah had a feeling that the Goblin King didn't like to be questioned.

"You can't talk to the King," Thilly said, a look of panic on her sweet face. She looked around her nervously, as if Jareth himself would smite her just for speaking of him, and then continued in a whisper, "It's a risk that none of us take! And, you, especially – you're new. You haven't even Changed yet!"

The other Changelings, who were the only truly intelligent residents of the castle besides the King, all thought she was a 'new edition', even though she was far too old to have been Taken.

"I'm not going to _change_," Sarah said to her with a tinge of malice. Jareth had specifically said that he wanted to 'keep her pretty face in tact' for his own amusement. "And I don't care. I have to talk to J-" Sarah stopped abruptly, clenching her jaw to keep herself from saying his 'improper' name, which was yet another taboo in the Servant world. "-_King_ Jareth."

"This is about the Prince, isn't it?" Thilly asked, lowering her head and her voice in another secretive whisper. "Oh, Sarah, you shouldn't spend so much time with him."

Sarah almost screamed, but out of fear of sending Thilly huddling in a corner, she kept her composure. "And just why not?" she asked. "The King hardly speaks with him, and he's my brother in the first place!"

"Oh, Sarah, Sarah," Thilly said, shaking her head in misery. "You shouldn't say such things... A servant stating relation to royalty? It's unheard of! No, no, no!"

"Thilly!" Sarah said sharply, because the Changeling girl had taken to shaking her head and _tsk_ing to herself softly, completely ignoring Sarah's attempts to make eye contact. "Thilia! Thilia, stop it now!"

Thilly looked up. A Changeling rarely could disregard a direct command – even by another servant. Sarah took Thilly by her thin wrists and held the girl's fretting hands still. Sarah hated how all the servants – especially Thilly – were always on the edge of everything. A plate drops, and they all fear for heir lives before rushing in disarray to remove the evidence from sight.

"Thilly, didn't you notice that Tob-" Sarah stopped herself yet again. "-the Prince, and I arrived at the same time? We even look the same." She meant in the fact that neither one of them had been Changed yet, which set them both as a minority in the Castle.

But Thilly shooke her head, taking the meaning differently, "No, the Prince looks like King Jareth."

That sentence made Sarah's blood run hot, then cold. "Thilly. Because you're my friend, I'm going to pretend that you didn't say that."

Thilly looked down at her hands with such a shameful expression that Sarah instantly felt guilty. She apologized, and Thilly stood up.

"I have to do kitchen duty during supper," she said meekly. She turned to leave the dark little cupboard-room and, just as her hand was on the door handle, she looked over her shoulder at Sarah. "Did… Did you mean that? About us being friends?"

Sarah looked at her for a few moments before smiling and nodding. "Yes, Thilly... Yes, I did mean it."

Thilly looked slightly more cheerful at that and Sarah felt less terrible as the Changeling girl left, sweeping away in a flurry of thin cotton skirts and dingy apron before closing the door behind her with a hollow thud. This left Sarah alone in the stone room. She shivered and looked up at the small window – barely the size of an average piece of paper – with distaste. The glass in the window was stained a near-opaque yellow so that, even though a dull light could filter through, Sarah wasn't able to see outside. She hadn't seen the world out there since she'd arrived, and she found herself wondering about the change Jareth had mentioned. How much had it changed?

With a sigh, Sarah looked down at her hands. She thought about the Labyrinth as it'd been five years ago – when she had a group of wonderful friends to see her through every difficult situation. It was nice to have Thilly to talk to, but she wondered about them. Hoggle, Ludo, and Sir Didymus… What had Jareth done with them once she'd left?

Sarah thought back to the last day she saw them and closed her eyes.

"_And remember, fair Maiden… Should you need us…"_

"_Yes… Should you need us... For any reason at all…"_

"_I'll call," she'd said. She'd promised._

Within an instant, tears fell from Sarah's eyes and she tried her best to fight back the sobs that wanted desperately to escape her mouth. How could she have been so selfish? _She_ could escape Jareth's anger after she'd rejected him, but what about the actual _citizens_ of the Labyrinth and the lands around it? She just thought that, once it was over, that it was over. She'd slowly forgotten about it, them, everything, and she moved on with her life.

But none of them moved on. She sometimes heard the cooks in the kitchen talking about the 'construction after the Girl' that was happening in the city. They didn't know her by name or face, however – just as a stubborn, selfish girl-tornado, tearing up their city and angering their already bad-tempered king. All she cared about in the beginning was herself – _her_ wishes, _her_ hopes, _her _fantasies, and in the end none of that really changed.

Except Toby. In the end, she realized that Toby mattered, and she cared about him. For a long time during her journey through the Labyrinth, her mission was fueled by fear – fear about what her parents would do to her, if she'd be arrested or if she'd tell them the truth and be admitted into an insane asylum. But in the end, when she saw that other people cared about her, and that she was capable of caring for other people, her mission changed. It wasn't for her, anymore. It'd been for Toby.

Sarah thought back to what Thilly had said. The resemblance between Toby and Jareth was frightening for her, though she didn't know how Jareth was explaining the sudden appearance of an heir to his 'Goblins'… Maybe he didn't have to? Maybe they just believed what was easiest, incapable of forming theories and hypothesis. Toby was the prince. Respect the prince. That was all they needed to stay safe in their little worlds.

Judging by the sudden orange-red tinge the light filtering through the yellow window was taking on, Sarah figured that sunset must be close. She inhaled deeply then exhaled in a self-composing rush.

Thilly appeared in the doorway, ready to guide Sarah to Jareth.

It was time to greet the King.


	6. Requests

**HERE YOU GO! This one's actually on time - perfectly on time, not a day early or a day late or anything. The next one will be on time as well. I will make sure of it.**

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Chapter 6**

The hallway leading to Jareth's tower room was less than soothing, the dark-stained wood embellished with iron sconces molded into the shapes of various bizarre goblin faces shocked and fascinated Sarah simultaneously. The torches burned unsteadily, and the fretful movements of Thilly as the Changeling girl led the way did nothing to quell Sarah's rising fear. Perhaps that was meant by the design – a simple ploy to impose apprehension on visitors… If so, it worked like a charm.

Sarah was careful to stay close to Thilly. The paths and hallways of things in the Underground were rarely as linear as they appeared to be and Sarah didn't want to wander down the wrong corridor. But, sooner than she'd expected yet not nearly soon enough, Thilly stopped in front of a large, dark wooden door that matched the walls around it. An iron handle and latch were the only things marring the dark, polished wood and the idea of what lay beyond made it seem like a looming threat.

Settling herself, Sarah pushed in front of Thilly and raised a fist at the polished mahogany...

…the knock that resonated through Jareth's tower room now was so different from the last one he'd heard that he almost laughed. It was almost a pounding, like Sarah was hammering her fists at the door in anger – and she very well might have been. Jareth still didn't know the true reason why Sarah wished to see him after two weeks of peace and quiet.

Of course, as far as he's concerned, it couldn't be anything good… That girl was sometimes more trouble than she was worth.

Going against his usual standards as King, Jareth pushed away from the window he'd been staring out of and opened the door himself. When he did, the Changeling girl from earlier gave a little squeak in surprise then spun around to run down the hall and disappear into the flickering shadows.

She left behind a very flustered Sarah Williams.

The girl had changed little since the last time they'd seen each other. Her clothing was a bit more presentable – obviously she'd borrowed a proper dress from one of her roommates – but aside from that, she still looked dingy and bedraggled… And angry, too. Very, very angry. He could see it in her eyes, though she attempted an air of carelessness by crossing her arms over her chest and leaning against the doorframe.

"Well," she said snidely. "Are you going to let me in, _King Jareth?_"

She spat the final words out like they were an umpleasant tast in her mouth and Jareth grinned as he stepped aside with a mocking flourish.

"By all means," he said. He shut the door with an audible thud that rang through the room and turned to find Sarah staring out the distressed glass window in awe.

The world Sarah saw was in shambles and it was all she could do not to fall apart in another wave of guilt. She really _had _been little more than a reckless tornado of a girl. She'd thought that it was her duty to do whatever she could to save Toby and had the false impression that all the goblins and dwarves and whatever else lived in the City were against her… Now that she thought back to it, it'd only really been the guards who were against her, but she'd destroyed the houses of the villagers all the same. Innocent, minding their own business, and she'd flattened their homes for her own selfish reasons.

"That's right," Jareth's voice broke into her thoughts, "you haven't seen outside yet, have you?"

She turned away from the window, hoping in the dim light that he couldn't see the glossy look that unshed tears gave her eyes, and focused angrily in on Jareth. "And you haven't been much help in the matter, huh? Keeping me locked up in here like I'm another one of your slaves, when I'm not – I'm the sister of your precious _heir_, and I only get to see him once or twice a week. I _know _Toby can't be happy with that, because he's practically screaming when I have to leave."

Jareth walked to the window and leaned against the wall next to it, staring pointedly at Sarah as the young woman fumed. Her arms were still crossed over her chest and, at the silence that now overtook the room, her composure started to waver. Her brown eyes flicked from Jareth's face to the window, then down at her servant's uniform with obvious distaste.

"I never _forced _you to stay indoors, Sarah," Jareth stated calmly, though his eyes glittered with the usual suppressed anger. "Your duties are designated solely by a Miss Noriche, am I right?" He nodded in answer to his own question and Sarah started to pluck at a loose thread in her grimy skirt hem. "If you feel that you're not being treated well by your superiors, I suggest you speak with them, as I have little to do with the affairs of the servants. I've set up a nice little system as far as these things go – the servants are ruled by the Upper-Level servants unless a number of them express serious complaints, then I look into it… But if I change things around for you, that would just be unfair, now wouldn't it?"

Sarah averted her eyes to the floor briefly, a flash of scarlet that could have either been anger or embarrassment coloring her cheeks under all the soot and grime, and Jareth smiled smugly to himself. He moved away from the window and circled around the room, well aware that Sarah's distrusting eyes followed his every move.

"As far as young Tobias is concerned," Jareth said. There was a pause as he stopped behind the dark throne, leaning his elbows on its back in a casual stance. "I think you're right… You should be allowed more time with him, and he is quite upset once you leave after your visits… but it would have to be done in your free time, as it just wouldn't be fair to put extra work on all your servant friends…"

Sarah stared, her mouth agape as her focus fluttered between Jareth, standing haughtily behind his throne, to the rest of the murky tower room. "I don't _have_ any free time," she sputtered through clenched teeth. "The most I get is when I sleep, and even then it's hardly a couple hours! I had to take time out of sleep just to come here and talk to you! Plus, all the allotted hours for breaks don't fall into Toby's schedule – I've checked. The only way I could ever see him is if I don't sleep, and by the time the work day ends I'm absolutely exhausted!"

For a brief moment Jareth looked cheerfully victorious, though he quickly hid it behind a contemptuous frown. "Oh, well… isn't that just too bad?... Can't trade in a few moments of sleep for your own brother? Oh, Sarah… I thought more from you."

Sarah glared at Jareth, her teeth bared and practically snarling, "You _planned _this, didn't you? You _made sure _that Miss Noriche gave me the worst possible hours so that I couldn't see Toby!"

"I told you, Sarah… I don't plan the servants' hours – their designated leader does… Perhaps Miss Noriche just doesn't like you? ...Though, from your positively _charming _personality, I don't see how that could be the case."

Silence overtook the conversation again as Sarah glowered at Jareth, who simply stared back with a placid smile on his face. The time passed and the world outside darkened as the sun set further and further on the horizon and a dazzlingly bright moon began to rise. The appearance of the moon, vivid and white while tinged slightly with pink-purple haze, reminded Sarah bitterly of the crystals Jareth had used to both threaten and charm her into staying in the Underground.

Finally, Sarah adjusted her posture and looked down at he bare feet, scuffling her toes on the stone floor with an emotion that Jareth just couldn't pinpoint. "I want to talk about getting him out of here," she said quietly, careful not to let her voice waver and her eyes only rising to meet the Goblin King's face at the end of her sentence.

"I told you before, Sarah. He wished himself here – it isn't your place to get him out."

Sarah's eyes widened and she started forward, her voice no longer careful. "But he's only six! He didn't know-"

"We've gone over all this already!" Jareth interrupted. "Toby does not wish to leave the Underground, and therefore he will not leave. Now, I've considered your previous wish to see your brother more often and I've agreed to allow you one hour every other day during Tobias's lunch to see him – perhaps if Miss Noriche finds your performance particularly good over the next couple of weeks, I'll give you more time, but for now you'll be happy with what you've got, is that clear?"

Jaw clenched, Sarah nodded sullenly. She knew that Jareth was fully aware that not allowing her to spend time with Toby would result in the boy starting to distrust him and the Underground and he'd eventually wish to leave. She also knew that their entire conversation up until that moment was merely entertainment for the Goblin King – just as her ordeal five years ago had been. The Goblin King was a puppeteer, and Sarah was little more than his favorite marionette.

Jareth moved around to the front of his throne and sat down, his posture suddenly much more regal than usual and his eyes glinting with angry fire as he watched her. "Now, is there anything else you'd like me to do for you, Miss Williams?"

Sarah thought a moment and nearly gave a spiteful response before arriving to a much better conclusion.

"Yes," she said. "I want to see Hoggle."


	7. Reunion

**Wow.. I got all of _two _reviews last time... For the sake of my fragile soul, I'm going to blame FanFic-dot-net's sketchy alert system but let me just say, my ego is tremendously downsized right about now. Sad, sad, sad... **

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Chapter 7

Sarah watched the short, squat goblin as he turned down the hall, making a look of disgust as she ran headlong into a cluster of cobwebs and immediately began pulling at her face, neck and hair in attempts to removing all remnants of the nasty, sticky substance. The goblin was the first true one she'd seen since she arrived. The castle was now mostly run and populated by Changelings and other Goblin-hybrid creatures more pleasing to the eye because, apparently, Jareth had banned the more grotesque lot to the darker jobs of guards and wardens.

The dungeons were surprisingly empty, though they made Jareth's Tower Room hall look like a theme park attraction. Every inch of the place was covered in dirt and webs, creeping, crawling spiders and creatures that Sarah didn't know the names of. The air was stagnant and dusty despite the small open windows in each lonely cell and Sarah choked on every breath she took, surprising herself in the longing desire to return to her servant's quarters just to get out of the horrible environment.

But she couldn't. Somewhere in this hellish place was one of her best friends and she couldn't help but feel that she had a part in forcing him here. She'd asked for Hoggle because, as far as she knew, he was the only one of her friends that Jareth knew by name.

Also, he was the one she'd promised her friendship too, and he was the one she disappointed.

"Y'know this dungeon is the only place in the whole castle left over after the Great Fall," the goblin said with an air of pride, its high-pitched and warbling voice shocking Sarah out of her reverie. "It's 'cuz it was undergroun', and ya can't make somethin' fall further undergroun', now can ya?"

"Um… no?" Sarah said.

"That's right, no… Y'know, I've been workin' as the Head Warden here fer… oh, decades. Many decades. I was one o' the first goblins Jareth hired and I guess he liked me so much he decided ta keep me even after 'ee fired all tha rest."

Sarah actually thought the only reason why the goblin still had its job was because no one knew he was down here, or even who he was, but she refrained from saying this aloud and simply replied with a cautious "That's… nice?"

"You bet it is, missy."

The conversation died off as a result of Sarah's lack of enthusiasm and she just took to looking around before, finally, the goblin guard stopped in front of a cell that looked depressingly just like all the others – miserable and sullen and bare… save for a single figure huddled in the farthest corner.

"Hoggle?" Sarah said tentatively. The figure stirred as locks clicked and the gate swung open with a loud, grating squeal of disused hinges.

The guard stepped aside and Sarah, in her servant's clothes and five years older than the last time they'd seen each other, moved toward her old friend.

"S… Sarah?" Hoggle's distinctive voice sounded a bit harsher than normal and Sarah supposed it was from lack of use. The cell gate slammed closed and the guard waddled back down the hall.

"If'n ya need anythin', jus give a yell," the goblin guard said from behind Sarah, his tiny form already moving down the hall.

Sarah was left to face Hoggle. She didn't know what to say – how could anything she said take back all those horrible things she did? She didn't mean to do them – not really – but they were done, and her friend had paid the price. What could she possibly do to make everything better?

"Hi, Hoggle," she started. "I… uh… I'm…"

"Yer not real."

"What?"

"Jus' a figment o' me imagination, you are."

Sarah blinked and shook her head, not understanding. "Hoggle, what are you talking about? Of course I'm real. I'm right here, see?"

She reached out gingerly and prodded the shadowed figure in the corner, and Hoggle immediately sprang to life, finally moving into the moonlight filtering through the tiny, barred window so that Sarah could see him.

He hadn't changed a bit, save for the clothing he wore and a little less weight on his form. He wore threadbare muslin-type material similar to what Jareth had originally put Sarah in, and she wondered if he hadn't initially planned for her to be a prisoner rather than a servant.

"Sarah!" Hoggle nearly shouted, making Sarah jump back in surprise. "It's really you, is it? I was thinkin' I dreamed it all – all of it, the goblin battle an' everythin', but o'course that couldn't be 'coz I'm in this here cell an' the city's all but destroyed completely. Jareth'd thrown me in 'ere when you left an' I been 'ere ever since."

Sarah wiped her eyes, hiding it under the guise of too much dust in the air even though she knew Hoggle probably couldn't see her either way. Five years in a prison cell because she'd had the idea to reject the Goblin King. Five years, her friend had spent in this horrible place. Guilty by association with the Girl.

"Well," Sarah said with half-hearted cheerfulness, "at least it's not the Bog of Eternal Stench, right? You were so afraid of that one, remember?"

Sarah could see Hoggle nod soberly, "The Bog was destroyed when the kingdom fell. Jareth didn' wanna bring back 'the old ways', he said. He said that those threats didn' do much help… I s'pose I had somethin' to do with that… I kept helpin' you even though he threatened me with the Bog ev'ry which way."

Sarah tilted her head, looking at Hoggle's silhouette carefully. "You're using 'I' a lot more than usual, Hoggle…"

"What?"

"Everything you said back then was 'Hoggle' this or that, and you're using 'I' more… Why?"

"I s'pose I jus' got tired o' the old way. S'pose I needed a change." He shuffled slightly before moving on. "An' what about you? What're you here for – thought you won an' all that?"

Sarah let out a sigh and awkwardly looked to the floor. _You won_, he'd said. She knew he really didn't mean anything by the wording, but Sarah felt like it was an accusation. If she'd been smarter about all this, if she hadn't been so thoughtless and selfish, he would've said _we won_.

"Jareth… brought me back… As a servant," she replied meekly.

Hoggle just sort of shrugged at this. "Well, 's better'n what I'd expected of 'im. Oh, he was angry – an' not for no reason, neither."

"What do you mean? What happened after I left?"

"No one's told ya? Oh, well, 'spect not. No one really like to talk 'bout it. The Great Fall, they call it," his form shifted and Sarah could see the moonlight reflecting off eyes glazed with remembrance as Hoggle's mind shifted back to five years previous.

"The whole place fell apart, y'know. The castle collapsed'n the labyrinth folded in on isself. The city was alright – well, the folks in it were, anyway – but anythin' Jareth'd made 'imself was rubble. The city was safe 'coz the people'd made it, not Jareth… Not that it was much help, considerin' we'd jus' torn through half of ev'rythin' tryin' to get to Toby… But the people were safe, and none of the City-dwellers died… but the ruin. The guards say they're still rebuildin' an' – Sarah? Wha's wrong?"

Sarah sniffed loudly and tried to choke back a sob but failed. Hoggle moved beside her as she slowly moved to the floor, leaning against the grungy stone wall of the cell and Hoggle put a comforting arm over her shoulder.

"Oh, Hoggle," she said miserably. "Hoggle, it's all my fault. I'm so stupid, Hoggle. I didn't even think, I didn't think about it. I didn't think about any of it – just, I wanted to get Toby back and I wanted to go back and live a regular life, I wanted to just be a regular teenager. I thought that was the point. I really thought that was the _point_."

Hoggle gingerly patted her shoulder and Sarah let out a sardonic laugh. He'd never been that good at showing affection, and it appeared that that aspect hadn't changed much.

"It is not your fault, Sarah," he said carefully, going against his improper dialect and pronouncing each word in a clipped, forceful fashion to make sure she heard every one. "You tried, you fought good'n strong, but things jus' didn' turn out the way we'd wanted 'em to. Ya can't blame yerself fer that. Ya can't see the future, can ya?"

She laughed again and wiped her face on the sleave of her servant's dress. "No, I suppose I can't… But I still should've paid attention to the past and present. I just marked everything off as a fantasy and tried to forget it, but…"

Hoggle shook his head and moved across the room. "No more a' that," he said gruffly. "No more a' this whimperin'. Yer the only person to ever stand up ta Jareth and walk away with 'er head high – ya can't go about feelin' sorry fer yerself, cryin' an' blamin' yerself fer things ya could never stop. Really, what would the rest of 'em say?"

Sarah looked at Hoggle sharply, "The rest of them? Ludo and Didymus? Where have they gone, anyways?"

Hoggle looked out the barred window, a knowing gleam in his eye. "They're out there. Released before me, 'coz I was actually employed by Jareth and got a longer sentence. I s'pose they're out there, helpin' ta rebuild the city'r somethin' like that."

"Yeah," Sarah smiled. "Yeah, that sounds like something they'd do…"

"My sentence ends soon y'know. Couple weeks, I think – hard ta keep track o' time in 'ere. But, soon."

"Maybe I could help – talk to Jareth or something? Maybe when you get out, we could talk a little… It's so nice seeing a familiar face in here, Hoggle. It makes me feel…"

"Like yer not alone?"

"Yeah. Like that."

There was silence for a while as they both stared out the window at the lightening sky and Sarah felt better than she had in weeks – perhaps even years, during that time after her journey through the Labyrinth when she felt like she was missing something but just couldn't place what.

"It's a nice feelin', isn't it? Not bein' alone?" Hoggle mused quietly.

Sarah just nodded and smiled.

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**P.S; Yes, I do hate dialects and yes, I did destroy the Bog of Eternal Stench for no other reason than to bury my least favorite aspect of the film... For the record, I hate toilet humor. ): **


	8. Sleep

**This chapter's a bit longer than usual because it's jam-packed with lots of important stuff!**

**As usual: REVIEW, REVIEW, REVIEW!**

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Chapter 8**

For the second time in the same amount of days, Sarah was standing in the Tower Room of Jareth's castle, facing the Goblin King. She'd found the room on her own this time, though she didn't have the slightest idea how. She'd been walking along, trying to determine the perfect way to bring up Hoggle's early release to Jareth, and before she knew it she was heading straight for those dark, flickering goblin lights. For the first time since she'd arrived, Sarah smiled a real, genuine smile not bogged down by the sadness she felt when around Toby, knowing the mistake the boy had made in wishing them both here. Seeing Hoggle again had made Sarah feel much better, made her feel more connected to what had happened and made her remember the good things that were knitted between the bad.

Her knock was just as forceful as it'd been during her first visit, and Jareth once again opened the door himself. For a fleeting moment Sarah wondered when the man slept - or if he even slept at all... Perhaps he really was as foreign as to never need sleep, to run off of magic or the moon of god knew what else. What was he?

It didn't seem fair that Jareth appeared to know nearly everything about her and Toby, and Sarah didn't know a thing about him. She knew his name, but only his first name. A last name, should he even have one, wasn't known by any of the servants or townspeople according to Hoggle. They didn't know how old the Goblin King was, though he hadn't changed at all physically in five years, so he might just not age.

_He can reorder time, though, _thought Sarah. _He did that last time, trying to make the Labyrinth harder for me... _

It was all a strange mystery that she found herself more and more eager to solve. Curiosity once again took over Sarah's intentions, made her want more than just the up-front and obvious. She wanted to know what made King Jareth tick, what made him who he was, what he was - whatever he might be. Was he a goblin, a human, or something else entirely?

Shaking her head, Sarah was forced back into a reality in which the subject of her reverie was staring at her expectantly, holding the door open so that she could pass into the room. She did so and turned, but before she could speak Jareth held up a hand.

"Let me guess? You'd like Hoggle to be released... when? Tomorrow? Today? Perhaps some time before noon?"

Sarah was surprised by both Jareth's intuition in what she'd been about to request and the exasperated note to his voice... It was incredibly out of character for the normally cool-as-ice Goblin King, and Sarah decided that, yes, Jareth needed sleep but no, he hadn't gotten any rest in quite a while.

She stuttered a few moments before responding, "Well, he only has about a month left on his sentence. What's it matter if you just let him go a little sooner? It's not like you have anyone else down there to set a 'bad example' for... Where are you keeping them, by the way? All the goblins - the ugly ones, not just the Changelings? What happened to your little goblin flock?"

He evaded the final inquiries altogether, skipping to Sarah's question about Hoggle's release without so much as a flicker of the eyelid in response to the others.

"Haven't you made quite enough requests since you've arrived?" Jareth said, rolling his eyes and spinning to pace around the room, his gaze fixated on Sarah with something that reminded her of earnestness, like a dutiful teacher trying his best to straighten out the classroom troublemaker. "You're a servant, Sarah – not the queen, not like you would've been."

"I'm also Toby's sister," Sarah shot back, ignoring the shade of bitterness at the last half of Jareth's sentence. "And I've been trying my best to put up with all this for the sake of him, so the least you could do is give me one old friend to get through this with. Hoggle's spent five years in that dungeon and he hardly did anything!"

Jareth turned to face her; the rays of the early-morning sun filtering through the window and making his pale skin shimmer slightly. He looked at her with wide, unbelieving eyes,

"_Hardly did anything?_" he said incredulously. "He merely went against my direct orders and aided someone in attempts to destroy my kingdom… I believe that is what many call _treason_, my dear, and in any other country the penalty would be death!"

Sarah took a swift step forward, hands clenched to her side. "You're not saying you'll kill him!"

"No, _little girl_," he sneered, "once again I'm going to display the generosity that you so naively scorned five years ago and set your little dwarf friend free."

Sarah's expression shifted from anger to surprise before it softened. She let out a sigh and leaned against the wall, her glance shifting to the window briefly before returning to the face of the Goblin King. She felt tired, of her anger, or her predicament, of all this fighting with him... It didn't help that she hadn't slept much lately, and that when she did sleep her dreams were permeated with swimming visions and flashes of things that would jolt her into wakefulness long before she was truly rested.

"Um... Th-thank you," she said with a heavy amount of uncertainty. It'd all been too easy, too simple and just not Jareth's way of doing things. Her mind was muddled with exhaustion and this twist of the Goblin King's personality caught her entirely off guard. Everything else, he'd made her work for, he'd made her answer riddles for and find her way but this... he'd hardly fought her on it…

"Why?" she asked.

Jareth didn't answer her, simply stood and faced her with an odd tilt to his head, a question obviously formed in his mind... Or, perhaps a plan.

"How long has it been since you slept, Sarah?" he asked innocently enough.

It was even more of a surprise and for a moment Sarah was without words. Her vision flew across the room wildly, taking in every shadow and item as if, at any moment, goblins would spring from the corners and attack. She sputtered a bit before finally admitting, "About two or three days, I think… Why?"

"You look tired," Jareth said, and no matter how she tried she couldn't find the touch of irony that usually laced all the things he said, the anger or the mockery was completely masked by what Sarah could only think of as genuine care.

His mismatched eyes, which had contrasted between glittery chips of ice and malicious, burning embers throughout her most recent stay in the Underground, were completely neutral and placid despite their conversation moments earlier. Even his stance – his head tilted curiously to the side and his arms crossed over his chest as he leaned against the far wall – wasn't pompous or regal in any way. He was casual, normal, concerned…

And it made her very, very uneasy.

"Why?" Sarah repeated, but her voice wasn't as strong as she wanted it to have been.

She felt like the rug had been pulled out from under her with this new Jareth standing there, worried about her… health? There was so much wrong with that picture but still, somewhere hidden in all the wariness, Sarah felt a tiny bit of delight.

"You should get some sleep, Sarah," Jareth said, continuing his caring tone. "Visit Toby, then get some sleep…"

"I'd like Hoggle set free, first," she said. She didn't mean to give the request the forceful bite that it left her mouth with, but the confusion was taking its toll on her. She didn't want to let her guard down. Even though nothing about this new Goblin King was explicitly fearsome, it was the very lack of threats and bitterness that made Sarah second guess everything she said.

Was this all some sort of test? Would Jareth really let Hoggle free, or would he find a way to use the dwarf in order to make Sarah more miserable than she already was? He'd given her more time with Toby, but she knew that was only because Toby would be unhappy without seeing her and all Jareth really cared about was keeping his heir nice and happy in the Underground… Would Jareth promise all these things to Sarah, only to take them away at the moment she least expected it?

…but that wasn't his way of doing things, either… Jareth had offered Sarah everything, but it was Sarah who rejected him. She had every reason to believe that Jareth would have gone through with his promises, would have kept her in the Underground as his queen and given her her dreams… So what was going on? Why the sudden change?

With a glance upwards Sarah realized that the Goblin King had shifted away from the wall and was merely a few feet away from her, staring at her with those newly sympathetic eyes. Sarah stared back, for some reason her cheeks flushed and she had the sudden desire to turn tail and flee, forget about her requests and just get out of that room, away from Jareth and his shifting personality, but she couldn't move. Backed against the windowsill, Sarah was unable to turn away from the king as he stepped further again, so slowly he hardly seemed to be moving at all.

And then, like a clever cat hypnotizing its prey with slow, deliberate movements, Jareth's hand moved below Sarah's chin and she hardly noticed. He lifted her face up just slightly, and Sarah's eyes didn't break away from his. He leaned forward just a bit and the only thought running through Sarah's mind was awareness of the sudden increase in her heart rate, her pulse thudding against her head as the Goblin King's lips touched her own.

The kiss only lasted a few moments – just long enough for Sarah to realize what was happening and break away with a surprised cry, moving with almost inhuman speed to stand in the flanking corner of the room. She stared at Jareth with wide eyes and he stared back with a serious, contemplative expression that reminded Sarah briefly of the one he'd had in her Ballroom daydream.

For a short moment Jareth looked just as confused as Sarah, but then that confusion broke and the Goblin King laughed. There wasn't any joy in his laughter; just the laughter of someone who had successfully fooled another person, mirthless and malicious and Sarah couldn't stand to hear it. Her face reddened with rage and frustration, she clenched her jaw and flew out of the Tower Room in a torrent of billowing skirts a suppressed, curse-laden snarls.

Behind the closed door, Jareth's laughter died down almost instantly to be replaced by a thoughtful grimace. He ran a black-gloved hand over his face, still lightened by the rays of the morning sun as he stood in front of the distressed window, and sighed to himself. Sarah would be planning something soon – he knew it. Something to remove herself and Toby from the Underground forever… but the Goblin King just couldn't let that happen… Not again.


	9. Freedom

**Okay, once again I only recieved a few reviews for the last chapter and I'm confused as hell because I thought the last chapter would get much more than all the rest of them. It also appears that some of the people who had started reading Childhood's Lament weekly have dropped off and given up entirely... So I'd like some feedback via the messaging system as to what the problem is - are the chapters too long, too short? Is the story not moving fast enough? Is the story just not interesting enough? Is there not enough romantic tension? Is it just too damn boring?**

**Because, as much as I would personally hate to cancel this story just as it's getting to the plot arc, I'm not really writing this for me to read and me alone. I'm also not going to write this just so a few people can read it, though I adore those of you who have and are reading it. However, if you want it to continue, say so, otherwise it's going to be canceled soon.**

**Also, I'm getting rid of the "once a week" updating system. You'll still get at least one chapter a week, but on some weeks you might get two or three depending on how into the writing I am. Check back on Fridays, though, because if nothing's been updated on any other day, it _will _be updated on Friday. Guaranteed.**

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Chapter 9 **

"Sarah?" Thilly called for the third time in the last couple of minutes. "Sarah, are you _sure _you're alright? You seem so distracted and… oh… _different_."

Sarah assumed this was the tactful Changeling way of saying 'scattered and clumsy', considering that she'd already broken three goblets, split a wooden bowl down the seam, lit a wooden spoon on fire, thrown away several utensils because she hadn't thought to check the plates before scraping them into the trash, tripped over the hem of her skirt and ran into the glowering, threatening old Mrs. Noriche.

"I'm fine, Thilly," Sarah said, though even to herself he voice didn't sound too sure. "I've just got… things on my mind. You don't have to worry about it."

Thilly smiled her sweet, bright-white smile and continued drying the dishes Sarah was handing to her, stacking them neatly to her right. "It's just that, you're a real friend, Sarah, and I want to make sure you're well. Oh! You're not feeling ill at all, are you? Mrs. Noriche has already given you a warning for missing so many hours these past couple of days; you just can't get sick and miss any more!"

"I know, Thilly… I'm fine. Really, I'm fine – just a little tired, that's all."

Thilly nodded at this and went quiet, leaving Sarah to her thoughts. The same thoughts she'd been enthralled with all day.

What had happened to Jareth the Goblin King in that Tower Room this morning?

It would be a lie to herself and anyone who asked if Sarah denied being attracted to Jareth. Despite his abhorrent tendencies, he was a physically attractive man, and when he'd kissed her it was all Sarah could do to keep from falling over in response to the fluttering, girlish feelings that had risen up in her stomach and chest. She'd had many kisses before, but never one that seemed to be straight from a fairy tale – a handsome king falling in love with a peasant girl and both of them living happily ever after.

At the time, that was how it seemed.

But, of course, in the Underground nothing is what it seems.

So when Sarah had remembered that, she'd run away from him and the fairy tale kiss. For an instant afterwards she'd thought she'd made a mistake, thought that – just maybe – Jareth wasn't as horrible as he first appeared to be.

Then he'd laughed. Thinking about that laughter brought back feelings that Sarah couldn't even connect to actual memories, like something from a dream but so terribly real that she just couldn't forget all of it. Feelings of being lost, of being hurt and small and incapable of defending herself. Helplessness. Hopelessness.

And Sarah knew now that, despite all her teenage fancies and daydreams, she had to get away from Jareth. She had to get Toby and herself away from the Goblin King, try to find another way out of the Underground and return home. Somehow, some way, she'd have to save Toby from that horrible king, from this horrible place.

But as she thought of the Underground – or, at least, the Goblin City – as a horrible place, she was reminded of Thilly. She was Sarah's only real friend, and vice-versa, here and the thought of simply leaving her behind made Sarah feel sad and guilty. She just couldn't do that – give the girl a friend then just as quickly run away from her and leave her alone, like she'd done five years ago with Hoggle, Ludo, and Sir Didymus.

Sarah was finished with abandoning friends.

"Sarah!" Thilly whispered harshly into her ear, startling Sarah out of her thoughts. The Changeling girl was looking pointedly at her and Sarah was suddenly aware that she was clutching, her knuckles and fingertips white, onto what appeared to be a porcelain plate that Thilly was trying to pry from her grip. "Careful, Sarah, this is expensive! Mrs. Noriche will have your head if you break this one!"

"Oh!" Sarah hastily let go of the plate, trying her best not to seem embarrassed for her thoughtlessness, but she'd let go too suddenly and the plate slid from both hers and Thilly's grasp, falling with what felt like slow-motion to hit the stone floor and sending a too-loud _chink! _to echo through a too-quiet kitchen.

Both Sarah and Thilly stared at the plate, now split into four sizeable chunks as well as several smaller bits that made the plate impossible to repair. Everything had gone deathly quiet as Changelings and imps alike looked from Sarah and Thilly, to the plate, and then to the kitchen door.

"_Excuse_ me!" a throaty voice cried as its speaker parted a sea of servants. Sarah finally looked up to see Mrs. Noriche barreling down at her, the woman's thicker build making her an easy find in the mob of thin, waif-like Changelings.

No one really knew what Mrs. Noriche was. She had the hair and complexion of a Changeling but she was far too broad and her face was neither innocent nor pleasant like the others. Her teeth were too sharp, her tongue sometimes flicked from her mouth like that of a snake, and her disposition was the equivalent of a wounded tiger with anger management problems. Her eyes, too, weren't the usual hue for a Changeling's – they were a near-black blue and squinty, always peeking out through knitted brows like cold chips of cobalt glass.

And those little chips were staring – or, rather, glaring – directly at Sarah.

"You!" she pointed, her voice little more than a growl. "I've had just about enough of _you. _You miss hours, you trip, you forget customers and you daydream all day long! You run into everything, you can't do anything right, and you _BREAK MY ELVENWARE PLATES!_"

Her voice had risen from a growl to an all-out scream and her complexion had turned from waxy grey-blue to a heated purple-red. Thilly was falling apart at Sarah's side, wringing the hem of her skirt so hard that Sarah could hear the stitches ripping, but Sarah herself was too shocked to move. She simply gawked at Mrs. Noriche, her brain only capable of meaningless thoughts such as what one would actually _call_ that horrid color of the hefty woman's face.

"I don't care if His Majesty wants you around to _'help out'_! You're about as much help as a maimed marmot and I want you _gone! _I wouldn't care if the King himself _walked in here_ and told me to let you stay! I want you _GONE_, you good-for-nothing little wretch! GONE – DO YOU HEAR ME?!"

And to make her point, she stamped one foot and pointed to the door. Sarah stood there for a heartbeat, but it was a heartbeat too long as Mrs. Noriche grabbed her arm and spun Sarah in the direction of the swinging door, ripping the apron from Sarah's waist as she passed. In the blink of an eye, Sarah was out of the kitchen and standing, thunderstruck, in the deserted hallway.

She could hear the commotion of dishes clanging and work being resumed behind the door, so her abrupt dismissal hadn't interrupted too much in the lives of the servants, but Sarah was lost as to what to do, where to go, who to tell. She knew she probably just lost her basis for staying in the Underground, knew that Jareth would eventually figure it all out, laugh at her once again, and send her back without Toby, and that worried her profusely.

But, as she made her way to the room she and Thilly shared, Sarah also realized another thing, and that realization made her stop and smile uncontrollably.

She no longer had any obligations, no longer had anything keeping her from leaving the castle. She was free, but only until Jareth found out about her unemployment and returned her to the Aboveground.

_But,_ Sarah decided, _he'll never get the chance... I'll be gone, with Toby – and Thilly – before he even knows what's happened._

And as the bell that designated the actions of the servants dolled out three notes that meant lunch, Sarah retraced her steps and headed toward Toby's room. She had an agreement of an hour of lunch with her brother, after all, and even if she _was_ no longer employed, she couldn't just let that go to waste, now could she?


	10. The Lies Begin

**Thanks for the reviews, all. Nothing much to say this update, other than to ask people if there's a way to edit chapters without deleting the reviews connected with them.**

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Chapter 10 **

As Sarah walked into Toby's room she half-expected guards to seize her and toss her out of the castle for good, but none did. Toby's nurse, a pleasant-looking but motherly Changeling named Erithni, simply glanced at Sarah as she entered and left the room - an obvious sign that no one in the castle, save for the Changelings that had been present in the kitchen, knew that Sarah had been fired.

Sarah jumped as she heard an excited wail come from around the corner, and her brother ran (_sans_ sword, to Sarah's relief) and leapt into his sister's arms.

"YOU'RE HERE YOU'RE HERE YOU'RE HERE!" Toby screamed and Sarah couldn't help but laugh at the disbelief in his voice, like, despite being transferred to a magical realm and being appointed heir to the Goblin Throne, the little boy just couldn't believe his sister could be punctual for an appointment.

"Of course I am!" Sarah replied with mock surprise, setting Toby down and getting a good look at him.

She felt like, in the five days she hadn't seen him, he'd grown more than possible for that short amount of time. He still wore the striped yellow polo shirt and jeans he'd arrived in, though both articles of clothing were faded to suggest continuous washings, and Sarah assumed that the modern-day, six-year-old boy just didn't have the taste for the sort of silks and velvet regalia customary for a prince in the Underground. She enjoyed that thought. She wanted to keep as much of Toby as 'Toby' and not 'Prince Tobias' as possible, and his affinity for modern clothes meant he wasn't entirely lost in all the chaos around him.

Toby tugged Sarah over to a small, half-circle wooden table pressed up against the stone wall of the boy's new 'Royal Bedroom'. It was located just beneath a window and Sarah prepared herself for a wave of guilt at the sight below, but when she sat down at one of the little wooden children's chairs she was relieved to find that this tower was apparently on the opposite side of the Castle and overlooked a wide view of what seemed like red-clay desert spotted with several scraggly trees. It wasn't very interesting, until she turned to the left and saw a range of purple-green mountains and thick forest.

"The Underground's an eclectic place," she muttered to herself.

"Huh?"

Sarah glanced back at Toby and shook her head, "Nothing," she assured him, and looked down at the table where he was setting up a line of intricate little wooden figurines: a dwarf, several goblins, a curious gremlin-like creature that Sarah recognized as a Fiery – one of the beings that had tormented her during her last stay in the Underground – and some small, strange animals that Sarah couldn't name. Though they were wooden, the figurines were extremely detailed and painted with bright, fantastic colors that the art appreciator in Sarah found fascinating.

"These are the creatures of the Underground," Toby intoned, similar to the voice he used when reading a report for his first grade class. "They are the backbone of our civ-i-zay-chun-" he pronounced this as carefully and accurately as a six-year-old who had no idea what he was saying could manage "-and they all bring wonderful things to our world. The dwarf-" he pointed to said creature "-is great at finding gems, making jewelry that can be sold at market, and polishing rocks and stuff to greater benefit our eco-nimmy…"

Just as he was about to point to the goblins, Sarah stopped him with a laugh.

"What are you doing, Toby?" she asked with a quirked brow.

Toby picked up the Fiery figurine and made it perform little dancing movements as he answered, "I'm teaching you the stuff I learned when you were away. Miss Erithni teaches me things that she says is to prepare me for when I become the king, things about all the different stuff in the Underground that's different from back home. It's like school, only instead of learning junk about letters and numbers I get to learn cool things about goblins and fairies and all that... We always talked about things I learned from school back at home when you'd come to visit for holidays or my birthday..."

"That's true... but we don't have to do that right now." Sarah picked up the dwarf figurine and inspected it closely, trying to figure out what was used to paint the thing so vividly. She shrugged and set it back down, and Toby snatched it up again as any kid his age would, but he no longer seemed all that interested in it or any of the others. He shrugged and set the figures to the side, closer to the wall.

"So what's up?" he said with all seriousness. Sarah recognised both the saying and the expression on Toby's face as something she and her friends used to say to each other and laughed again, answering a "Nothing much," between giggles.

Toby made a face at her laughter and that only made Sarah giggle more. She was all giggles today. After all, she's finally free of her servitude to the Goblin King thanks to Mrs. Noriche and she's having a great time visiting with her brother. What is there to _not_ be happy about?

Erithni brought out Toby and Sarah's lunches on porcelain - 'Elvenware' - plates like the one Sarah and Thilly had broken, before returning back to the hallway silently. All the dutiful servant.

As time passed, Toby appeared to be completely occupied with his lunch but Sarah couldn't bring herself to concentrate on the food when, like a great big Grandfather clock ticking in her head, she knew she only had moments before the rest of the castle knew about her dishonorable dismissal from the servant payroll and she'd surely be sent away. She needed a plan to get Toby out of the castle, and she needed one before the lunch hour was over.

"Sarah?" Toby inquired, breaking her thought pattern. He prodded what looked to be small, quartered potatoes. "I know Miss Erithni said you're only allowed to be here during lunch, but I want to go on a trip... like the ones we used to take back, before... Like that one time you took me to the carnival and I rode the merry-go-round and had ice cream. Could we do that?"

Sarah thought for a few moments, a plan etching itself out in her mind. Then she spoke, calmly and cheerfully, and thanked fate or the mind of a bored six-year-old or whatever it may have been to give Toby the sudden urge to leave the castle.

"Sure, Toby," Sarah said. "I know just the place. In fact, I've been planning to take you to a carnival just like that one - only better, because instead of a fake merry-go-round there'll be real horses for you to ride, and fairies and lots of new people, and the kind of cool food here in the Underground."

Toby's face lit up quickly at the thought and he jumped from his chair to run to Sarah's side, hopping madly.

"When when when?!" he said, loud enough so that Erithni peeked in from the hallway and looked at them both strangely. Sarah smiled and waved at Erithni, who shrugged and closed the door again. Sarah turned back to Toby and put her index finger to her lips, shushing him and forcing his voice to a whisper as he continued to ask "When, when, when?!"

"Tonight," Sarah whispered back. "You have to make sure not to tell anyone, though, because we don't want people spreading the word and getting everyone jealous, do we?" To emphasize this Sarah slowly shook her head, and Toby duplicated the action. "You have to pack your favorite things up in..." she looked around a bit before finding the bag that Toby kept his wooden figurines in. Dumping the toys still inside out onto the table, Sarah pushed the cloth bag into Toby's hands, "this, see? Your cape that you wore the first day here, maybe some of the simpler clothes Miss Erithni gave you, some-"

"What about my sword?" Toby cut in.

Sarah nodded, figuring that, since Toby only had one set of clothes he actually enjoyed wearing, there would be room for the sword. "Yes, you can bring that, too. And I'll even bring Thilly and Hoggle - the real Hoggle, the one the figurine is modeled after, you'd like to meet him, right? - and we'll all go to the carnival together, okay?"

The grin on Toby's face then as he nodded emphatically made Sarah hopeful that this plan would work wonderfully. It didn't matter to Sarah that there wouldn't be a carnival at the end of their journey - the journey itself would be enough excitement for him, and the outcome of saving her brother from Jareth would be a prize to Sarah. After all, she didn't lie entirely - the chances of them meeting various strange creatures was a high one, the chances of discovering new and exotic Underground food was almost a guarantee, and perhaps there would even be a horse or two along the way...

But, in the back of her mind, a little voice berated Sarah. A little voice that whispered, _Liar, liar..._


	11. And They'll Continue

**Chapter 11**

After her hour with Toby was up and Sarah finished scouring the castle for possible means of escape for her and three others – one of which was a six-year-old boy, another would be a convicted escapee of the Castle Dungeons, and yet another would be a semi-flaky Changeling servant – she returned to her room. She was exhausted and, though she found the perfect method of escape, she was having second thoughts about whether she should do it this night – after only having a few hours of sleep in the past two days. She looked out the window and saw that there was still some time left before she'd have to get Toby. Perhaps she could take a quick nap and everything would be just fine.

However, she didn't have time to give in to her exhaustion as, standing near her bedroom door door, was a fretfully pacing Thilly.

"Oh!" Thilly exclaimed, running up to Sarah and demonstrating the degree of strength a Changeling was capable of as she held her in a death-grip hug. "Sarah! I didn't know if you were coming back, or His Majesty would send you away or anything, I was _so worried_! You shouldn't have just let Mrs. Noriche talk to you like that – we _both_ broke the plate, you should've told her – but none of that matters now, as there's someone here to see you!"

For a horrible moment Sarah thought Toby had ignored her orders to wait for her quietly in his room, but as Thilly pushed her to the door she saw that it wasn't Toby that had come to visit her, but the Dungeon escapee himself.

Hoggle, dressed now in the clothes Sarah had known him to wear five years ago, sat on a spindly wicker chair in the corner of the room, wringing his hands with enough of a degree of concern to take on Thilly the Master Hand Wringer herself. He'd been looking at his hands, at the walls, at his feet, but when he noticed Sarah enter the room he jumped up quickly.

"Hoggle!" Sarah said before rushing down to give the dwarf a hug that she supposed was the equivalent of the one Thilly had given her earlier, because Hoggle started making strangled 'I can't breathe' sounds about five second into it.

She let go quickly and stood up, sending Hoggle stumbling backwards before righting himself again. He made a big show out of Sarah 'rumpling' his clothes, which really _did_ look like the exact outfit he'd worn throughout their travels in the Labyrinth and, seeing how he'd been in a dungeon and they probably collected his clothing before admitting him, they very well could have been.

"I thought after…" Sarah trailed off a bit, not wanting her friends to know what had happened between her and Jareth in the Tower Room. Thinking quickly, she amended, "I was sure that Jareth wouldn't let you out early, but I see he did... Wait… Hoggle, you didn't _escape_, did you?"

Hoggle smiled at Sarah and shook his head, chuckling softly. "No, no. They let me out, said I was free t' go, s'long as I didn't start anymore trouble…"

Sarah smirked, "Well, then I hope you liked that cell, Hoggle, because with me there's nothing _but _trouble."

Thilly sprang up from her chair like she'd been pricked by something, moving towards Sarah before abruptly halting in the non-confrontational way that Changelings tended to do.

"Sarah, you're not planning on doing anything _illegal_, are you? Because I just can't let you do that! After Mrs. Noriche and the plate – you can't risk getting into any more trouble!"

The smile that had been plastered on Sarah's face immediately fell and Sarah could feel her training as an actress kick in. She looked miserably at her feet, careful to keep her face and tone evenly regretful. She knew what she was about to do and say was in many ways worse than the little white lie she'd told to Toby, but she also knew that it was crucial to get Thilly away from her devotion to Jareth and the rules of the Castle. She tried her best to ignore that nagging little voice that kept telling her these tall tales of hers were wrong, wrong, wrong.

"Thilly, I have to tell you something," Sarah started. She looked up to make sure she had Thilly's complete attention before casting her vision downwards again in all the appearance of apologetic truthfulness. "I… I talked to Mrs. Noriche after lunch… We sort of ran into each other and… I'm so sorry, Thilly, but she said that one of the others told her that _you_ broke the plate too, and she got so angry! She said that anyone under her command who couldn't admit to a fault while another was getting the blame didn't deserve to be under her command…"

Thilly looked both sad and confused. She shook her head, her brown doe-like eyes brimming with tears. Guilt tore through Sarah's heart and mind but she kept it at bay, knowing for _certain_ this was what needed to happen. She had to hurt in order to help, right?

"What are you… what are you saying, Sarah?" Thilly squeaked, her voice barely audible and threaded with worry.

"You're fired, Thilly… Mrs. Noriche said you're fired."

The girl fell to the floor, her ratty skirt billowing around her as she stared blankly across the room. "No one in my family has _ever _been fired from a job," she whispered. "I'm a f… f… _failure_?"

Sarah sat down quickly, across from her, and reached out to take her shaking hand. "No! No, you're not a failure at all, Thilly! No, you're just… You're just _fine_, I promise! It's Mrs. Noriche – she overreacts to _everything_. It's her, Thilly, not you. You're not a failure!"

But Thilly was sobbing and Sarah was holding her to her chest, patting her back and trying to stop the total breakdown the Changeling was going through. She'd figured Thilly would be disappointed, yes, but she hadn't the slightest idea how much a Changeling valued his or her occupation… She really should have thought of something a bit more delicate to entice Thilly away from the Castle, but…

_What's done is done,_ she thought to herself… and, though she tried to think the best of it, her thoughts didn't give her a whole lot of comfort.

* * *

Thilly had sobbed and cried and Sarah had tried to comfort her the best she could, but by the time evening struck she was more worried about whether or not Toby had kept to his word. She'd told him to wait until midnight, then ask Mrs. Noriche for a glass of water in order to get her out of the room. He said that she'd get it for him, that all the servants would do _anything_ for him, and Sarah groaned inwardly at the re-conditioning she'd have to go through to break him of his spoiled habits. 

"Thilly, we're going," Sarah said abruptly, just as Thilly's tears began to slow. Before the Changeling could either question or rpotest, Sarah stood up and pulled her to a standing position along with her. She kicked Hoggle's chair, where the dwarf had been snoozing for about an hour, and he stood bolt-upright faster than Sarah could blink. "You too, Hoggle. We're getting out of this place. All of us."

"What do you mean, Sarah?" Thilly asked, rubbing her eyes and sniffling. "We can't go anywhere... This is... home."

But Sarah was shaking her head. "No, Thilly... None of us belong here. We're too good for here... We'll stick together, go someplace else, anywhere else but _here_... We're going."

As she spoke, trying to convince Thilly, Hoggle went right to work gathering food, any warm clothing they might need, and anything that could become useful while traveling. He found a surprising number of things around the cabin, including a worn burlap knapsack that'd been used to hold washrags but could now be used to carry their traveling gear. He knew about Sarah's fancy for adventure and he didn't waste any time in arguing with her about where they would go, what they would do, and anything else... unlike Thilly.

After a few minutes of listening to Thilly's rambling questions, protests, and declarations, Sarah sharply cut in, "We're _going_, Thillia Thornwhistle Changeling, if I have to tie you up and throw you over my shoulder like a bushel of apples!"

And with that, she pushed Thilly out into the dark, empty corridor and began walking, quickly, towards Toby's room. Hoggle followed silently, his knapsack clutched to his stomach, through archways and down hallways and up stairs and down stairs... Despite the fact that Sarah had gone from Toby's room to her room and despite the fact she _should_ know the way because she made sure to memorize every step she took, it didn't take very long before she _did_ know that she and her friends were now utterly and completely lost.

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**Sorry, not very thrilling considering how long between updates, but THE ACTION IS STARTING! Yay!**


	12. Escape

**Hey look we're getting ACTION-Y, people!**

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Chapter 12**

Jareth watched Sarah, her image and those of her two friends captured within a crystal ball. It really did boggle his mind. How could a girl who could avoid all of Jareth's attempts to prevent her success, navigate a near-impossible Labyrinth and finish said labyrinth in less than thirteen hours _get lost_ trying to find a room that was only a few hallways away? And she really _was_ lost – almost eight halls and three floors away from anything that remotely _connected_ to Toby…

She _knew_ she was on the same floor of the Castle as Toby, so why did Sarah bother going up not one but _three _flights of stairs? The castle changed on occasion, sprouted new corridors and rooms, switched rooms around and dissolved staircases, but it wasn't nearly as bad as the things the Labyrinth was capable of…

"Perhaps she'd just gotten lucky in the Labyrinth," Jareth muttered to himself.

He sat alone in the Tower Room, his elbow resting on the arm of his dark throne and his chin resting on his palm while he held the crystal in the other hand. He was all the image of bored amusement as he watched Sarah take wrong turn after wrong turn, but in truth he was bubbling with a mixture of dread and excitement.

If Sarah didn't make it to Toby, he had nothing to worry about as far as his heir's escape went. If Sarah didn't succeed _tonight_ she wouldn't get another chance to try – Jareth would send her home, and though Toby would cry and scream for a while Jareth was sure he'd get over it eventually. A few new toys, maybe a new set of clothes like those dreadful ones he arrived in, and Prince Toby would be just fine again…

But, deep down, Jareth knew he didn't want to send Sarah away. He had the belief that it was her destiny to be his queen, and his destiny to have her. He knew she felt the same if she'd just look into herself, but as Jareth couldn't even bring himself to admit his own feelings out loud, it was unfair for him to expect Sarah to be able to.

No, he'd just have to let things play out. What's to happen will happen, and if he didn't interfere, if he just pretended he didn't know and left Sarah to her wanderings he couldn't say later that he made the wrong choice. He'd watch her, of course, but he wouldn't stop her.

Jareth rotated the crystal balanced on his fingertips and the polished, iridescent surface glinted in the bright lavender-tinted moonlight. He was an observer, a spectator, and he wouldn't interfere with… destiny.

For now.

* * *

Sarah turned down another hallway and still, she couldn't find the little golden bell. It was something she remembered from Toby's corridor – on the wall opposite his door was a little golden bell that he used to ring the servant when he wanted something, and Sarah was trying to use the knowledge as a marker for Toby's room. The only problem with _that_, however, was that Sarah didn't have a marker to _lead _to her marker and therefore she couldn't find a thing. 

"Uh… Sarah, as much as I like your little journeys, I… don't think this one's goin' too well," Hoggle whispered gruffly as Sarah stopped in front of a large wooden door.

But Sarah wasn't paying attention to her friend just then. There was something about the door that seemed familiar, like she'd seen it before, and anything familiar could possibly be a way to Toby. She reached for the handle, not expecting it to open but just out of curiosity, and tugged. To her surprise, the door opened slowly with a low, ancient-sounding creak.

Before she stepped into the room, she remembered Hoggle had said something and answered with a vague, half-hearted, "What? I'm sorry, Hoggle, did you say anything?"

Hoggle sighed and didn't respond, also curious as to what was behind the door. Sarah squinted into the darkness but couldn't see anything, so she adjusted her stance and tried to focus. Just as she was about to shrug and close the door, however, several wall sconces _whooshed_ alive with yellow flames and illuminated a room that Sarah could never forget.

A hundred stone staircases that went every which way. Up, down, sideways, left, right, and no where at all. It was the last room in her journey to find Toby and the last room in which she'd seen Jareth five years ago. It was also the room where she'd rejected him, and she remembered quite clearly the sensation of it falling apart around her… So how was it here now? Nothing in the castle was familiar to her, nothing was like it'd been five years ago, so why was this room different? Or rather, why was it the same?

"Why did he rebuild it?" Sarah whispered. Hoggle and Thilly had followed her into the room and they stood staring at the haphazard walkways with just as much awe as Sarah did, but as neither of them had seen the mystifying room before, she expected that their thoughts were much different from hers.

Though Sarah was unnerved by the sight of the Staircase Room, she knew that it shouldn't be such a big deal. She'd seen the Labyrinth, she'd seen Hoggle, she'd even seen Jareth, but there was something about seeing this room that made her travels five years ago so… real.

In truth, wasn't the staircases that uneased her, though just looking at them made her feel sick and dizzy, but it was what was just beyond those staircases - a separate hallway, with an arch and a window. Sarah could just see it, just beyond all the stone steps, even in the flickering light of the wall sconces. That room - if it could be called a room, for it was little more than a platform, really - was the place where she could've been given her dreams, she could've _given in_ to her dreams. She could've stayed with Toby and her friends, she could've married Jareth and lived in a world of magic and make believe, her own little fairytale. She could have escaped that life she'd thought was so terrible, that horrible thing she'd labeled as reality...

But she didn't choose that. She chose her brother, chose to return to her previous life, no matter how much she'd said she'd hated it. She'd chosen to grow up, she'd discarded her dreams and her childhood flights of fancy and the last thing she'd seen in the Underground was Jareth's disappointed face as her fairytale world came crashing down around her.

"Sarah, I'm not so sure about this," Thilly whimpered, pulling Sarah away from her thoughts. She motioned for Hoggle and Thilly to leave and hastily shut the door behind her, locking away the unsettling sight behind the large wooden door.

Hoggle rolled his eyes, thoroughly annoyed with Thilly's meekness, and Sarah had an excuse to not think about the Staircase Room or the room just beyond it as she returned to navigating the halls.

"You're not sure about _anythin'_," Hoggle said sourly to Thilly.

Sarah looked out of one of the small, arched windows that dotted the outer corridors of the castle. She remembered Toby's room didn't face the Goblin City, and that the view was pretty unique when compared to any other she'd seen. The view from this window was similar to the one from Toby's.

"Right… So, we'll just go down… two floors? Three? Yes, three floors, and we should be…" Sarah was muttering to herself.

Both Thilly and Hoggle let out a tired groan, and Sarah looked at them consciously for the first time in about an hour, trying to seem self-assured and apparently failing.

"No, no guys – two… er… three floors, and we should be there. Just as long as we remember to turn… right-"

"-left, Sarah."

"Left. Right, thanks Hoggle. As long as we remember to turn left, we'll be there in no time, and then we'll use my escape plan and we'll be out of this dreadful castle faster than you can say 'Oh, well what a nice sky!'"

"I doubt it."

"_Quiet_, Hoggle. You're being bad for morale."

Hoggle snorted derisively, "Oh, _I'm_ bad for morale and Sunshine here's the one snifflin' an' sobbin' every ten steps."

Thilly stopped mid-stride and stamped her foot, glaring hurtfully at Hoggle. "Oh, _really_! I've been perfectly nice to you, I offered you tea when you knocked on my door, I welcomed you into my home, and _this _is how you treat me!?"

"Well, I never wanted no tea an' it's no big deal to be _welcomed _by a Changeling. You lot _live_ off a' bein' nice an' all that. If you'd've been rude I expect you'd've burst inta' flames or somethin'."

Sarah whistled sharply, cutting off Thilly's reply, and looked at them both with a pointed expression. When they both looked sheepishly to the floor, Sarah smiled pleasantly and turned back around. She motioned for them to follow her and they walked steadily and quietly towards the stairs, with neither Sarah muttering about directions nor Thilly and Hoggle bickering loudly at each other.

She could still hear them both bickering _quietly_ behind her though, their voices low, urgent hisses punctuated by flabbergasted gasps of disbelief from one about something the other had said. Sarah still tried her best to recount the directions to Toby's room, confused as to how she'd gotten herself lost in the first place… Really, she'd defeated the _Labyrinth_ for goodness sakes! She should've been able to find a _bedroom_.

As they started down the first staircase Sarah caught a glimpse of the moon outside one of the small arched windows. The moon was just out of range, not quite high enough to show that it was midnight but still frightfully high. She had about an hour to get to Toby before her window of opportunity was slammed shut forever, and the feeling of being on a time limit to save her brother brought back unpleasant memories that were only heightened by the re-visit to the Staircase Room.

The strange difference this time, however, was that Jareth wasn't the one who had set the time limit. Sarah was.

* * *

Roughly four hours later, Jareth was awakened in his chair by a loud, booming sound of alarm. He could hear footsteps outside the door and was surprised into complete wakefulness as a Changeling rushed into the room without bothering to knock. Due to the initial urgency of the situation, Jareth ignored this uncharacteristic behavior and listened to what the Changeling had to say. 

"Sorry, Your Majesty, sir, but… But the Prince, he's missing!" and before Jareth could say anything in reaction, the servant rushed out of the room once again.

It appeared that Sarah, for the second time, had defeated the odds and succeeded in rescuing Toby. Jareth picked up the crystal that still rested in his grasp and watched as it focused lazily onto Sarah's worried face. It panned out just a little and Jareth could see, rested against her shoulder, the sleeping form of Toby, wrapped in a thick goose-down blanket.

The image began to falter and Jareth knew that he shouldn't have spent so much energy on watching Sarah try to find Toby's room, or on his little trick lighting the candles in the Staircase Room. Now that dawn was approaching, his leftover power wouldn't be nearly enough to watch Sarah as closely as he wanted to.

He'd just have to find her again once he'd rested a bit more. It would be a challenge if he didn't have an idea of where she was in the first place, of course, but it would be a worthwhile one as long as the eventual outcome was to his favor… And he would make sure of that. He was the Goblin King, after all, and he had an entire world at his command – one little girl couldn't be _that_ much trouble.


	13. Into the Labyrinth

**Sorry it's late, I totally forgot what day it was. Progress is being made as far as the action and stuff goes. Hope you read and enjoy and review and all that. Don't worry - this fic IS going somewhere. I have an ending planned and everything! I'm just trying to give you shorter chapters so they're easier to read, and therfore easier to (**cough**review**cough**) understand and so you'll stick with it longer.**

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Chapter 13 **

_(Note, this is taking place _before and during _the last few paragraphs of Chapter 12, while the castle is just becoming aware that Toby's been taken. It's only an hour or so past midnight during this time.)_

As Sarah stepped just past the gates of the Goblin City and into the Labyrinth, with Toby asleep in her arms and two friends walking along next to her, she was suddenly stricken with a great overwhelming realization of what she was doing. She was deliberately doing something that she knew would anger Jareth, that she knew would result in her expulsion from the Underground without Toby, and possibly much worse fates for her friends. She knew that, if this wasn't done right, she would throw away the small sign of sympathy Jareth had shown her and she'd lose Toby forever, and she knew that she wouldn't be able to blame anyone but herself.

Sarah's steps slowed as she listened to the gates of the Goblin City creaking closed. They looked to be wrought-iron, though it was unlikely as she'd heard somewhere that faery-type beings were allergic to iron. Either way, they were dark and heavy and intricately shaped – very different from the large stone-looking gates from five years ago. The sight of them, so very different from the way they'd been, almost made Sarah feel like she wasn't doing this, that there wasn't any danger and none of her previous travels through the Labyrinth had happened.

If she imagined, if she concentrated real hard she could almost pretend the gates were those of the park she frequently took Toby. She could almost believe that she was simply taking Toby home after a night of make-believe, but when she breathed, when she felt the weight of the six-year-old in her arms, Sarah realized that she was far too exhausted for it to have only been a night.

She could feel the grime on her face, the calluses that had formed on her hands from hours and hours of scrubbing every surface in that god-awful castle, the ache in her bones, the rough fabric of her skirt against her skin, and the strain of too little sleep. She felt years older, years of weariness and work, of screaming and fighting and crying and so many emotions in such a short amount of time. Sarah didn't think she'd ever felt so tired, so drained of life and she wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep for days.

But she couldn't. She shifted Toby against her shoulder and the boy gave out a sleepy whine before drifting off again, perfectly content to sleep the night away while the rest of them sneaked and whispered, trying their best not to be detected in the night.

Sarah stole a glance back to the castle, a looming shadow against the iridescent moon and the lightening sky. She could see fluttering lights – perhaps lanterns or candles – in some of the windows and though she tried to tell herself it wasn't really intentional, Sarah looked just a little higher up, at the highest window in the highest tower of the castle for a light, a little flicker, but there was none.

Perhaps he hadn't been told yet, or perhaps that window was special in some way. It was the only one in the castle that had glass in its window, as far as she knew, and they could be shaded against the world. It would figure that Jareth used windows only he could see out of, giving him a benefit that no one else had. He always wanted the upper hand, always wanted to be one step ahead of the rest of the world, and the sad thing was that Jareth usually _was_.

"Sarah?" Hoggle hissed from the darkness in front of her. Both he and Thilly were a considerable amount of steps ahead of her, having kept moving after Sarah had apparently stopped dead in her tracks rather than just slowing, like she'd intended.

Moving as quickly as she could manage, Sarah caught up with her two friends as they decided on traveling down the leftmost path of the Labyrinth. Sarah's eyes took a moment to adjust to a sudden light as she was thrown into an eerie green glow that emanated from strange moss covering every inch of the stone walls to either side of them.

_Too bad Toby's not awake to see this_, Sarah thought to herself wistfully.

She'd never seen a wall of moss in the old Labyrinth (though she did recall some strange Eye Moss), and with a sudden jolt of fear Sarah realized that any hope of Hoggle being familiar enough to guide them out was completely gone now. He was just as clueless as Sarah was to this entire thing. They'd just have to rely on logic and luck from now on, and –

"Where will we sleep?" Thilly whispered. It was strange the way the Changeling whispered – it wasn't as harsh as the whisper of any other creature, less like a hiss and more like smooth silk. Thilly was a rare creature in that she sounded more natural when she whispered than she did when she spoke at louder volumes.

"We'll just have'ta find a nice place, won't we?" said Hoggle sharply.

Sarah rolled her eyes. The dwarf was intentionally being short with Thilly out of spite, and as a result any question Thilly asked had to be re-asked by Sarah in order to get a proper answer.

"Hoggle, you're going to have to start being nicer now. We're all in this together, and I won't have fighting between you and Thilly self-destruct this entire team."

Sarah could see Thilly's large eyes widen, "Team? We're a team? Oh, I've never been part of a _team_ before."

Hoggle muttered something that, thankfully, neither Sarah nor Thilly could hear. Sarah smiled softly at Thilly and nudged her comfortingly. "You are now," she said. "And this _team_ doesn't fight with each other, _Hoggle_, okay? It's gonna be just like before, with Ludo and Sir Didymus."

"Yeah, I didn' like them much neither," he said, but Sarah could hear a bit of fondness softening his words and she wondered where, exactly, Ludo and Didymus had gone. Had they stayed in the Labyinth even after it'd been rebuilt, or were they somewhere beyond it, like Sarah was planning on going? The Underground wasn't just the Goblin City, after all. There were probably as many creatures and communities out there as there were on Earth.

"But, really, Hoggle – where _will_ we sleep? I'm exhausted already and we've only just started. I can't last much longer without some kind of rest."

"Oh, I'll hold Prince Tobias if that's what's tiring you, Sarah," offered Thilly brightly, still speaking in that whisper that wasn't quite a whisper.

"It's just Toby now, Thilly, and it's not that. I just haven't slept well lately and it's really taking its toll on me."

Thilly nodded and patted Sarah on the shoulder. Sarah smiled. She could tell already that Thilly wasn't as meek as she'd been inside the castle. Her steps were taken with more sureness, her hands didn't wring nervously at her skirt, and though her gaze was haphazard and she occasionally flinched at what looked like nothing, Sarah knew that being away from the castle was really helping bring Thilly out of her shell.

"We'll sleep as soon as we're good'n lost," Hoggle said.

"What?"

"Well, we can't stop right 'ere where all's they need ta do is go down one corridor an' find us, can we? No, we'll have'ta go deeper'n that. Take a few turns, then a few more, till we're so lost an' turned 'round we don' know which way's up or down."

"I… guess that makes sense."

Suddenly Sarah remembered something that she couldn't believe she'd actually forgotten. It was probably the worst thing she could forget and the biggest asset on the part of Jareth and it could doom her friends and her in any moment.

"Jareth can find me," said Sarah with terrified awe. "Remember, Hoggle. Every step of the way he knew what was happening. He knew exactly where we were and he showed up to try and make things difficult."

Hoggle coughed nervously and Sarah could see him looking around at the walls of the labyrinth with a newfound intensity.

"I.. uh.. I prob'ly had a bit ta do with that," he said gruffly. "Y'see, back then, 'fore I got ta know you an all, remember that, I sort of worked for Jareth. Told 'im what you was doin' and where I was goin' ta take ya. It wasn't when I really knew ya, tho, Sarah an'-"

"Don't worry, Hoggle," Sarah cut in fondly. "I knew after the peach what you'd been doing, remember? And I forgave you then and I still forgive you."

Hoggle nodded but continued with, "You're right, though. He can watch ya, through those crystals he's always got with 'im. After the Labyrinth an' the Castle fell apart, though, he had ta use a lot of his powers ta rebuild, and since then he can only use so much durin' the day. He sorta recharges at night – somethin' about the moon helpin' him."

"So, when is the best time to rest then? If we sleep at night he'll simply use all the time we're sleeping to track us down, and if we sleep during the day we'll have to travel at night and he could still use that time to track us down as we move. We're not safe at all, at any time."

"I say we sleep during the day," Thilly offered. "If we're moving at night, he's less likely to find us, isn't he? Because if we're all moving while he's trying to find us, it's harder – like…"

"Firing at a moving target?"

"Oh, I wasn't going to use an example that was so violent, but yes."

"Right. So's we keep goin' 'till daybreak, then we can sleep for a bit, then keep goin'. The more we move the better'a chance we got."

Sarah nodded and sighed as Hoggle turned left and Thilly and she followed. Though Sarah knew Hoggle had no idea where he was going, he still gave off the impression that he did and Sarah admired him for that. When she was unsure about something it was usually as obvious as if she had her worries stamped on her forehead, but she looked up to the sort of people, like Hoggle, who could keep a level head in a crisis. And if this wasn't a crisis, she didn't know what was.

* * *

**P.S;** ** I still hate dialects... especially whatever the hell Hoggle's is.**


	14. The Owl's Call

**Nothing really to say this time around, except to beg for more reviews. But I do that every week, so you all are probably used to it by now.****

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**Chapter 14**

Sarah and her friends soon found out that the path they had chosen was not, in fact, a simple choice among many in the Labyrinth, but instead an actual tunnel that feigned the look of the night sky above them. Apparently, the glowing moss thrived off of starlight and so, within their shelter, it was permanently night time. Hoggle considered this a blessing of sorts, as he said he had difficulty sleeping during the day, but Sarah wasn't so sure.

So, that morning before they had settled down to sleep, Sarah asked, "But wouldn't it stand out, having a ceiling? Wouldn't they be able to find us easier?"

Hoggle had given an unthreatened shrug and a shake of his head. "Nah," he stated. "Nothin's like that 'ere. From above, all's they'll see is a clear walkway. Fer now, until we get outta 'ere, we're as safe 's we could get."

That's what he'd said, but though Sarah, relieved, quickly fell asleep after that, she was awakened a short time later by a chilling cry. It was low and ghostly and it seemed to come from everywhere at once so that it took Sarah a while to figure out what, exactly, it was. But she did figure it out, and the realization made her even more frightened than she had been previously.

Sarah scrambled from beneath the blanket that the overzealous Toby remembered to bring – along with five others as well as a down pillow for himself – and looked around the glowing hallway. The rest of her companions were all sleeping soundly and didn't seem to be disturbed by the owl's cry that she heard so clearly.

_How could they still be sleeping? _She asked herself. To her, the sound was as loud as if it was coming from a mere foot or two away.

Slowly, as if in a daze, Sarah backed away from her sleeping friends and further down the hallway. There was nowhere for an owl to perch, nowhere for it to hide, but the further away from her friends Sarah moved, the louder it became. Finally, out of the lichen that lined the walls formed the golden glowing eyes of an owl, then the face of the bird, then an entirely different face altogether – the face of Jareth.

It took a while, but eventually Jareth stood, fully corporeal and real, in front of Sarah. The last thing to change into their normal, human adaptation were his eyes, which remained glowing owl-gold for several seconds before reverting to Jareth's usual icy, mismatched gaze.

"What?" Sarah stumbled, much like she'd stumbled for words before in past meetings with Jareth. "You… you can't have found us yet! They said it'd take you at least a day or two to track us down!"

Jareth smiled, leaning against the wall with the sort of posture one would expect from someone who thought – or knew – he'd already won the game.

"Sarah, my dear… You've tried to outwit me, you've tried to escape me, and you've failed…" His harsh stare faltered a bit and his contemptuous smile softened to just the opposite – earnestness, sincerity, a plea for… something. Sarah couldn't quite figure out what, but it was there.

"Just give up," he said, echoing words similar to what he'd said five years past. "You can't go beyond the gates of the Labyrinth no matter if you win or not, Sarah… please, surrender."

For a fleeting moment Sarah wanted nothing more than to break down crying, fall apart and give in to something she'd wanted so much but had too much pride to accept. She wanted Jareth, she wanted the Labyrinth, she wanted it all, but she knew that Jareth would throw it back at her like he had when they'd kissed in the Tower Room. She knew nothing could be as simple as the way Jareth spun them and she didn't want to take the risk… Besides, that pride of hers hadn't disappeared just yet.

"No," stated Sarah simply. She knew if she kept things short it would lessen the chances of her voice breaking, or of her saying things she didn't want to say. The truth, perhaps.

Jareth looked at her with the same disappointment he'd showed when Sarah had rejected him five years ago and shook his head. Sarah felt the urge to run up to him, embrace him – something they'd never done before. They'd kissed, yes, but it was from a distance – there wasn't the warmth one received when they kissed the one they loved, and Sarah wanted that warmth. At that moment it didn't matter so much if they kissed, only if he held her, and it was everything Sarah could manage to stay put, to stay neutral and cold and uncaring.

"Then you leave me no choice," he said. "Continue as you wish, Sarah, but know this – I will not stop asking you, I will continue to try and persuade you to surrender… You cannot pass the Labyrinth gates without losing some part of you… Remember, my love, nothing is as it seems in this world… Not even me. Not even you. Not even this."

And Jareth began to fade away, back into the glowing moss behind him. Once again, the last things to change were his eyes. Though they disappeared well enough, their haunting sincerity remained branded into Sarah's mind. Full of remorse, like that night that seemed so long ago when she'd chosen to return home rather than stay with him. She remembered then, with cloth and the wings of an owl floating, swirling all around her…

Sarah awakened with a start, having just been hit about the head with a down-stuff pillow wielded by her six-year-old brother. The blanket she'd been using was tossed over her head, as well as the blankets of her friends and the two extras Toby had packed, and Sarah realized that the encounter with Jareth had been nothing more than a dream.

"Wake up!" Toby yelled. Hoggle shushed him and Toby repeated his command in a harsh whisper. "It's breakfast time!"

Hoggle and Thilly had set up a picnic for breakfast and, for the time being, were getting along pleasantly with each other. Toby ran to sit next to them as Sarah scrambled from beneath the weight of six blankets and a pillow.

"Where'd the food come from?" she asked groggily.

Thilly smiled, "Pri-… uh… Toby brought the big things – a wedge of cheese, a loaf of bread, and two canteens of water-"

"Yeah, how'd 'e carry all'a that an' thems blankets in that li'l sack, anyhow?" Hoggle inquired.

Toby's response, through a mouthful of bread and cheese, was "I pack good."

"-and while you were sleeping Hoggle and I went foraging for some things to add to the… menu, so to speak," Thilly finished, nodding encouragingly at Toby.

Sarah frowned, "Well… I feel sort of…"

"_Lazy_?" Toby offered, once again through a mouthful of food.

"Yeah, Toby… And don't talk with your mouth full."

Toby rolled his eyes and continued eating while Sarah moved to start on her own meal. She grabbed a slice (or, rather, tore a chunk) of bread and some cheese as well as some of the berries Hoggle and Thilly had 'foraged' for while she'd been sleeping and… dreaming.

A feeling told Sarah that her dream hadn't been an ordinary dream. There was a crucial message hidden beneath the surface of something she would usually assume was just stress and a poor diet, something that seemed more like Jareth warning her from a distance, being unable to warn her in person. He'd told her to give up the fight and turn back.

But Sarah wouldn't do that. He'd have to try a lot harder than some unnerving dream to frighten her off what she considered her mission – she wasn't fifteen anymore, she wasn't a frightened child. She was a strong adult, and she would do what was right for her and Toby and her friends.

_But nothing is what it seems_…


	15. Forward

**I almost didn't update this tonight because I've been totally exhausted for like, a month and tonight it's especially wearing on me. But I did update and.. well, be happy about it, I guess.**

**You can be unhappy about it, too, but just don't tell me that. I don't respond well to negative criticism. **

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Chapter 15

As Jareth stared into the clear crystal resting on his fingertips the moon outside the glass-covered window of the tower room slowly began to rise along the horizon and the sun began to sink into a horizon awash with splashes of purple, hazy red and vibrant orange. It wasn't the sun or the wonderful sky that its setting caused that Jareth cared about however, but the moon: because, with its seize of the sky came Jareth's renewal of power. No sooner had the sky darkened to a velvet plum color and the moon's first silver-lavender beams hit the crystal in Jareth's hand did the crystal sparkle and glimmer to life, bringing to its surface an image of Sarah and her traveling companions.

They had made significant progress in the hours since Jareth had warned Sarah through her dream (a medium that he'd thought he'd left behind since her new arrival in the Underground) and Jareth shook his head at her. Once again, she was making the Labyrinth seem easier than it really was.

Toby was awake now and Sarah, Hoggle, and Thilly were trying their best to keep the young boy from jumping, running, and touching every strange thing he saw within the Labyrinth's walls. Sarah was smiling at her brother and chatting with her friends, looking more like a normal girl enjoying a nice walk than someone who plotted and performed a kidnapping, told more lies than she could count, and who, most of all, was in deep, deep trouble.

Jareth let out a sigh as he rotated the crystal around in his hand. The image in the center remained the same, suspended and fixed in on Sarah unless Jareth ordered it to move elsewhere. He didn't know what to do about her. He'd tried warning her, tried giving her a chance to turn back, but she, of course, did not comply. She never did. She was stubborn, prideful, and more work than she was worth.

So why did Jareth expend so much energy on her?

He'd tried looking into himself during the five years between Sarah's visits to the Underground, tried examining his actions then, and he realized that, in truth, Sarah provided a great amount of entertainment for him. She was expressive, imaginative, and completely out of reach for him.

Jareth had lived a life of luxury from the very beginning and it was a curious experience, to find the one thing that he wanted but just couldn't have. He'd gotten everything, anything, he'd ever wanted, but when he found Sarah, and he wanted Sarah, she'd turned him down. He'd tried everything he could to get her, to win her without coming outright and admitting his feelings and, therefore, exposing his weakness, but she didn't succumb to his promised.

Why? It was a mystery to Jareth and though he knew that the solution to it would inevitably be bad for him, he couldn't help but try everything that was in his power to solve it.

In the crystal image, Sarah stifled a yawn and Jareth felt a streak of guilt for costing her yet another night's rest. He shook his head and rested his chin on the hand free of the crystal, subduing the guilt with excuses – he'd needed to disturb Sarah's sleep, for her own good. He'd needed to warn her, and it wasn't his fault that she'd wasted his warning by ignoring it. Perhaps with a little exhaustion she'd be more susceptible to the next warning.

Jareth always did things for Sarah's own good.

In the crystal Sarah laughed at something Thilly had said. The human girl and the changeling were walking together, further back from Hoggle and Toby, and talking quietly to each other. Jareth smiled – if his plan was to work it was crucial that Sarah and Thilly become close friends. She would not, upon any circumstances, be able to leave the Labyrinth gates.

For her own good.

* * *

Sarah exhaled deeply and shifted the sack of food and things to her opposite shoulder as she watched Hoggle chase down Toby, who had run off to inspect something more closely. 

"Toby, don't go rushing at things like that!" Sarah called after the boy. He didn't seem to hear her, but Hoggle had caught up with him and was guiding him away from whatever it was that he'd been looking at.

She felt like they'd been walking for days, though she knew it'd only been a few hours. The air was cold and the sky looked darker than it should - even the large, bright moon didn't seem like it was enough to chase away the apprehensive feelings that Sarah had been feeling ever since she'd woken up from her dream.

They were out in the open now. All around her, Sarah could only see dust-colored stones and tall, curved walls that seemed to guide them in circles. She was starting to feel like she should ask her friends to turn back and go another way and the nervous, unsure feelings brought back more unpleasant memories of her past experience in the Labyrinth.

The strange thing was that, back then, there were various creatures that Sarah had talked to, but now it was so deserted she almost expected tumbleweed to blow past, like they did in the movies. They hadn't met up with a single conscious life form in a day's worth of travel and it was giving Sarah the chills… Had Jareth completely done away with all the creatures just to make the Labyrinth more difficult? What about Sir Didymus and Ludo – if they weren't here, and they weren't in the City, where could they possibly be?

"Don't worry," said a voice next to Sarah. She jumped reflexively then breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that it was just Thilly.

"I'm sure we'll meet… _someone_ soon," Thilly was saying. "But this is pretty strange, isn't it?"

"You read my mind," she said with a heavy sigh and Thilly allowed herself a small whisper of a smile that Sarah couldn't help but return.

"Toby's quite happy, though," Thilly went on.

Sarah nodded, "Just wait until he realizes that there aren't any 'monsters', as he would put it… He'll completely pull a tantrum, then."

"He doesn't seem like the tantrum type…"

Sarah laughed, "You're right, he's not… But he won't be happy, that's for sure. He'll start asking you and Hoggle full biographies just to make himself feel better."

Thilly nodded and brushed back her feathery white hair, yawing and tugging at her skirts as if trying to straighten the ratty, torn things into a more presentable form.

Sarah adjusted the knapsack on her shoulder again and Thilly, seemingly unconscious of the fact, reached back to take it from her. Sarah lifted a brow at her as the Changeling carried the heavy bag casually, letting it hang off the ends of two of her spindly, fragile-looking fingers. It was yet another example of how strong Thilly actually was, and Sarah didn't really know how she felt about it. How could such a strong creature be forced to do menial labor like washing dished and scrubbing floor tiles? It just didn't make any sense.

"Did you sleep well last night?" Thilly asked after a few steps of silence.

Sarah blinked, not knowing how to answer the abrupt question. The Thilly she'd known back at the castle wouldn't have asked such a thing – especially not with the sort of curious, unapologetic look on her face as she did at that moment.

"I… uh…" Sarah trailed off.

"It's just, you seemed… disturbed… Tossing and turning and that."

"The ground was just… hard to sleep on," Sarah explained. She didn't really want to go into the details of her dream with Thilly and, thankfully, the Changeling girl didn't inquire any further.

The exchange brought Sarah to another dilemma that she needed to deal with. What would she tell her friends about her relationship with Jareth? Thilly didn't have any idea about Sarah's previous experiences with the Goblin King, and as far as Hoggle knew, she hated Jareth just as much as any creature in the Labyrinth or the City did.

What would Hoggle think if he knew that Sarah had romantic feelings for a person they both outwardly considered to be terrifying and malicious?

Sarah shook her head and, though she tried to make it look like she'd just been shaking hair out of her face, Thilly gave her a strange sideways look. Sarah decided that, once they left the Labyrinth, she wouldn't have to tell her friends anything about Jareth. He would no longer be an issue.

"Sarah!" Toby called from far ahead of them. "Come see this, quick!"


	16. Little Truths

**Very, very sorry for the long hiatus. I wanted to put up a little notice that I wouldn't be updating for a while, but I never got around to it... Which is a bit ironic, in a way... **

**Anyways, I've been majorly busy writing things, but not fun things like Labyrinth fanfictions. I've been busy writing a boring, tedious, mind-numbing thing called the Junior High School Research Paper. And it was horrible, and devastating, and I'll never be the same again.**

**But I have updated now and I hope you enjoy. (: **

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Chapter 16 

Sarah quickened her pace to catch up with both the dubious Hoggle and the excited Toby, towing Thilly along with her until they reached their two traveling companions. For a fleeting moment Sarah didn't see anything remarkable other than very large, broad leaves in varying hues – a nice alteration from the miles of dusty stones and rock walls they'd seen so far, but still nothing that a six-year-old boy would be excited about. But as Sarah drew closer, she realized that the vivid fauna surrounding them was little more than camouflage for the incredible sight beyond.

Hoggle stood next to Toby, one hand grasping the back of the boy's collar as the other held on to the stalk of what looked like a giant flame-colored fern. Toby was leaning precariously over the edge of a rock face, the tips of his tennis shoes just a few inches past the ledge, and grinning wildly at the sight below him. Thinking quickly like the protective sister she was, Sarah snatched Toby back from the ledge and forced him to sit a safe two-foot distance from the steep, rocky drop.

"Hey!" Toby cried, his happy grin vanquished for the time being. "Hoggle had me just fine! I was perfectly safe – tell her Hoggle! I want to _see_!"

Sarah just shook her head, inching closer to the ledge herself and holding onto a bright green, bamboo-like plant for support. She squinted down into the darkness and could see, by the light of the moon overhead, that the chasm was enormous – large enough to fit three or four of the Williams' house on the gorge's floor and still have room leftover. Sprouts and sprigs of various vegetation, trees, thistles, all covered ledges both wide and narrow, and a tiny stream trickled through the center of what seemed to be a village.

"What _is _this, Hoggle?" Sarah asked.

The dwarf let out a sigh and Sarah turned to see that he was squinting at the canyon and its village with concentration. He shook his head, then looked up, to the left, and to the right.

"Looks like this's where the Forest and the Bog used t'be," he stated after a pause.

"But... How did it _sink_? You said it was demolished, but never that it _sank_. And there are no signs of a bog being here, or a forest other than these plants – what could have happened?"

"I never said nothin' about it bein' destroyed _naturally_… I said that _Jareth _destroyed it. Completely gutted it 'till nothin' was left but rocks, it looks like."

Sarah's eyes widened, "You're telling me that he _removed_ the forest and the bog? Like… Slicing out a piece of pie or something?"

"Looks that way."

Sarah shook her head, still not understanding. "But why didn't he just... flatten it out? Why did he _remove_ it?"

Hoggle shrugged, "Jareth ain't right in the head – simple as that."

Toby rushed up next to Sarah and she instinctively gripped the stalk she'd been holding on to tighter. Thilly moved to grasp her skirt hem in what Sarah assumed was another instinctive motion, but Toby apparently thought that gravity didn't affect him and looked at the long drop from the ledge with the same carelessness as someone stepping down from a step ladder. Sarah wondered if it was an after-effect of the time when he was an infant and Jareth had made it so gravity didn't effect him in the Staircase Room. Toby looked down on the village with bubbling glee, verging on fanatical happiness.

"Can we go down there? Can we please? I want to meet some Underground-ians!"

Hoggle rolled his eyes, "You've already _met _some. Lots of 'em, in fact!"

Toby frowned, "I want to meet more!"

Sarah looked at Hoggle, silently asking his opinion on whether or not it'd be safe to go down to the village. The dwarf sighed and shrugged again, moving away from his flame-colored fern and walking to the left. He pushed back some hanging, seaweed-looking vines and revealed curving, shallow stairs that had been carved directly into the rock and wrapped all the way around the gorge until the leveled out on solid ground almost halfway to the other side.

"I suggest y' mind Master Toby," he said gruffly. "There ain't no hand rails."

Toby hopped up and down a few times before Sarah snatched him into her arms. She moved carefully away from the ledge and to the stairway, eyeing the narrow steps with caution.

Thilly smiled pleasantly at Sarah, "If you don't think you can carry Pri- I mean, Toby… If you don't think you can carry him down the stairs, I'd be happy to."

Sarah shook her head, "No. I've had to descend ladders as Juliet, without looking, while remembering lines, on a stage built by college Freshmen… I think I could manage some stone steps."

Toby nodded, leaning in close to Thilly to whisper seriously, "Sarah was an _actress_."

Stifling a giggle, Sarah followed Hoggle and navigated her way down the stone steps. They were shallow, which was thankful, but she also noticed that they were very narrow. In order to keep Toby from dangling over open air as she carried him, or scraping against the sheer rock on the opposite side, Sarah had to go down sideways.

"I can walk on my _own_," Toby whined, trying to wiggle out of Sarah's grasp.

She held on tight. "No, you can't. If you'd stop squirming this would be a lot easier on me, you know. Just stay still for five minutes and we'll be down on level ground and you can run wherever you like, poking fairies, kicking talking trees and waking up these poor peaceful villagers just to get a good look at them - whatever, just give me _five minutes_ while I try not to fall to my death, will you?… I don't know where you got this irritating, stubborn independence of yours but it's getting really old, Toby."

Hoggle coughed loudly ahead of her, and Sarah had a distinct feeling that he was trying to say something. She gave him a glare that he couldn't see, as his gaze was directed precisely away from her.

"What did you say, Hoggle?"

"Nothin'. I ain't said a word."

Thilly giggled happily and Sarah turned her head slightly to shoot the Changeling another glare. Thilly covered her smiling mouth with a thin hand, but her large, expressive eyes were sparkling with laughter.

Sarah's head turned back and forth between her friends, "No, really – what is it, you guys? …Hoggle? What?"

Hoggle muttered something that Sarah couldn't hear, and she asked him to repeat it.

"I _said_," he started, "he'd prob'ly got it from _you_."

Aghast, Sarah's eyes widened. "You're implying that _I'm _stubborn?"

"I ain't _implyin_' nothin'. I'm flat out sayin' yer stubborn – and irritatin', and too independent fer yer own good, and there were times in our acquaintance that y'reminded me quite a lot of a overactive, curious child not unlike young Toby there."

"You're saying I was like a _six year old_ when we first met?"

He stopped and turned around and Sarah was thankful that he was several steps ahead of her, or she would have stopped short and probably would've been flung into the chasm. "If it makes ya feels any better, you ain't as annoyin' as ya were," said Hoggle, his face serious.

"_Thanks_."

They continued on in a pleasant silence – save for Toby crying out occasionally when he saw something interesting in the distance – until they were all finally on even, solid ground. Sarah let Toby down and moved her aching arms, sitting down on the second to last step to try and catch her breath. Her brother ran off to one of the stone cottages and Thilly raised her brow in a silent offer to go after him. Sarah nodded, too tired to try herself, and Thilly set down the supply packs to trot after the little boy.

"What're ya getting' too old for all this adventure'n stuff?" asked Hoggle, walking up beside her and setting his own pack next to the pile of others.

Smiling wanly, Sarah shrugged, "Maybe. This was really exciting when I was fifteen – scary, at times, but exciting – and I wouldn't give up my experiences, even the bad ones, for anything… But now it just seems so desperate, and I don't know why… I mean, I know I should get Toby out of here and everything, but it's not as direct as it was… Not as black and white."

Hoggle sat down on the grown next to her, looking up. "How's that again?"

Sarah shrugged again and winced, the movement making her aching shoulder creak. "Before it was simple – complete the Labyrinth, defeat Jareth, get Toby, and we'd just go home. One, two, three, done… But now I feel like I'm taking a trip around the world just to go next door… I feel like I'm taking the long way around, and what's worse is I don't even know what's out there… I don't know what path I'm taking, where I'm going or…"

She trailed off, unwilling to say the words she was thinking: _Why she was going_. She didn't know why, deep down – she knew well enough that, once she got home, she would be even less happy there than she was when she was scrubbing the floors of the Castle's dining hall. She had friends here, and her brother, and…

_Jareth_. She'd have Jareth, and she could no longer tell for sure if that was a reason for leaving or a reason for staying. Sarah glanced up at the large moon – no longer full, but large enough to look like it. Large enough to feign perfection. Was that all Jareth was? Feigned perfection? He held himself like he could do no wrong, but Sarah knew he often did. He made many mistakes and the most prominent one was underestimating her, lying to her…

But then, in that aspect, Sarah was just artificial. She remembered her days of making herself up, making herself someone else than what she was – she was an actress, after all – and she remembered how she'd believed that the world was always out to get her. Back then, _she'd_ thought she could do no wrong, blind to all her faults… and Jareth had opened her eyes to them, in his own way. He'd tested her, made her break under the pressure as she tried to get through the Labyrinth, and she'd tested him during their final meeting. She'd revealed his faults to him when she'd rejected him, when he'd realized that not everyone would succumb to his promises of perfection and fantasies.

"Sarah, Sarah!" Toby cried, racing out from behind one of the stone houses and breaking her concentration.

When Sarah didn't see Thilly with him she though that something had gone wrong, that maybe Hoggle had made a mistake in assuming that this village was safe, but then she saw the large figure lumbering up behind him and she grinned much like the six-year-old child Hoggle had compared her to earlier that night.

"_Friend!_" the beast growled, slowly and deliberately.

Sarah laughed something that sounded like a cross between a chuckle and a hysterical sob and rushed up to wrap the wooly creature in as big a hug as she could manage.

"_Ludo!_"


	17. Tea

**Nope, this story isn't over quite yet and I haven't given up and I haven't forgotten you all. I was just preoccupied by the fact that I didn't like my initial draft for this chapter well enough to actually upload it. I was in a very sad state of mind and, as a result, the chapter was very sad as well. Believe me, you would _not _have been happy with that one.**

**But here's chapter seventeen, anyways. Hope you're happy with this.**

**

* * *

Chapter 17 **

Sarah sat in a stone hut – large in comparison to most of the others situated throughout the gorge, but small when one took into account the occupants within it. An eight-foot-tall ginger beast, a human girl, and a dwarf took up most of the room, although there was also a six-year-old boy asleep in a far corner, next to a furry white and grey sheepdog and an exhausted Changeling girl, who leaned against the wall rather than lay down as if she thought it was her duty to take up as little room as she possibly could. The gentlemanly fox-guard Sir Didymus sat patiently on a pillow on the floor, having given up his chair to Sarah in a customary act of chivalry.

"Sir Didymus, I'm fine if you want your chair back," Sarah said. "Really – a pillow would be just-"

"I would not – nay! _Could not_ dream of such a thing, my lady!" the vulpine knight cut in sharply, waving a paw in the air and lolling his head about enthusiastically.

The truth was, the chair that Sarah had been given to sit on was a tiny thing that looked like it'd been whittled from twigs and pieced together with dried grass, and Sarah was afraid that, any moment now, the thing would give way and send her crashing to the floor. She nodded, smiled weakly and sipped her tea from a chipped off-white cup, cringing at the bitter taste for a moment before setting the cup and saucer on the dirt-packed floor next to her.

"It's nice seeing you two again," Sarah said wistfully for the third time that night. "Really. I… I can't believe we actually found you. It's so…"

Hoggle rolled his eyes and groaned, "Aw, yer not gonna start on that cryin' again, are ya? I really couldn' stan' another bout o' _that_ nonsense."

Sarah shot him a look before turning back to Ludo and Didymus, leaning forward carefully to rest her elbows on her knees. "You never explained how you got here, guys. What happened?"

Didymus tilted his head at an odd angle; his eyes stopped their usual mirth-fueled glimmer and were instead replaced by the sad sort of remembrance of someone shifting into their memories. It was similar to the look the Hoggle had when Sarah first visited him in the castle jail, and for the first time Sarah really noticed how much he'd changed in the long five years since she'd seen him. His muzzle was covered with grey hairs and his reddish-orange coat was also sprinkled with them, his overall look seemed more mature and his nature, though still quite loud and excitable, also seemed to have matured.

"After you left we attempted to leave the Labyrinth altogether, but when we reached what should have been the Forest…"

"Nothing," growled Ludo helpfully, and Didymus nodded.

"Yes, nothing… But there was really nothing left for us to do. We could still leave, of course, but then where would we go? I'd lived in the Labyrinth my entire life, and Brother Ludo here as well… This was all we knew…"

Ludo nodded his burly head, "Ludo home. Stay."

"So we decided to make the best of what we had. Ludo used his rapport with the rocks to our advantage and we spent nearly a year creating a community here."

"Ludo speak with rock friends. Asks them for help. They help, and we make home."

"A rather good one, too, if I may say so myself."

Smiling, Sarah patted Ludo's furry arm. "I'm happy you guys are alright… I don't know what I'd do if… if…"

"Oh, no," grumbled Hoggle from the corner. "Not this again."

She couldn't help it. Sarah burst into hysterical laughter punctuated by sniffles and occasional tears. Seeing her friends again made her so unbelievably happy that she couldn't express her feelings in actual words. Hoggle, Ludo, and Sir Didymus seemed to understand, however, because each of them showed their appreciation for her in their own ways. Ludo affectionately patted Sarah's head, Didymus smiled his canine smile, and Hoggle tried his best to show as little emotion as he possibly could; only allowing the slightest glimmer of happiness leak through his façade.

Outside, through the small, round window next to the hut's door, Sarah saw that the sky was getting brighter. It didn't seem like that much time should have passed since she'd arrived in the Gorge Village. It'd flown by so quickly with tea and food, stories and explanations and friendly reunions, but now Sarah could feel the exhaustion that came from carrying squirming six-year-olds down precarious cliffs, traveling and walking and worrying. Sarah felt that, maybe, the worrying was what took its toll on her the most.

Despite her comfort within the cabin, despite the pallet that Ludo had prepared for her next to Toby and despite her desire to just fall into it and sleep for years, Sarah was still well aware that Jareth was watching her. She knew that he could especially reach her through her dreams and that thought made sleep seem like a dangerous journey. If she slept, and he got to her, what would he do? Would it help him find her? How close was he, exactly?

And, especially, how long before they'd have to start running from him again?

They'd be so much safer if they'd just keep going, if they'd just pack up then and there and start again, but though Sarah tried to move herself, tried to get up with the intention of waking Thilly and Toby, she found that she couldn't move. Her eyes were so heavy and her legs felt like lead or, in contrast, like malleable rubber. She could feel her heartbeat, could see the brightly lit, congenial faces of her friends, and then nothing.

* * *

Hoggle looked at Sir Didymus, who looked at Ludo, who shrugged and sighed in his heavy, slow way before hefting his bulk from off the floor of the hut and leaning over the still form of Sarah Williams. 

"Sarah?" Ludo questioned, his voice little more than a low, grumbling growl.

When she didn't move, he prodded her with a fingertip and moved with unnatural quickness to catch her as she leaned dangerously to the left. With another low growl, he lifted her from the little chair she was sitting on and carried her to her section of pillows next to her brother, tucking a blanket around her with a gentleness that should have been impossible for such a massive creature.

"How long do you think it will last, hm?" Sir Didymus asked, turning to Hoggle.

"She only took a sip or two of 'er tea, so it won't be more'n a few hours. She'll actually rest this time, tho – none o' that thrashing and crying like she'd been doin'."

Sir Didymus nodded, getting up to inspect Sarah more closely. "That sounds most unsettling, Brother Hoggle. Most likely Jareth's work, no doubt about it."

"Well, tha's the name she kept sayin'. 'Least, tha's what is sounded like."

Ludo moved to stand next to Didymus, quirking his head slightly. "Sarah dream?"

Hoggle nodded, also getting up from his sitting position to look at his friend. "She was dreamin'. Don' really knows what about, but she can't have been happy about none of it. She shouldn' dream for this spell, tho. Nope, pure sleep all's the way through."

Didymus trotted to Sarah's forgotten teacup on the floor, picking it up and giving it a sniff. "Oh! Hoggle, how much of that herb did you put in here? It only calls for a pinch, you know – this much, it must have been the most bitter thing she'd ever tasted! The Lady would likely think me the worst tea maker in all the kingdom!"

Moving to take the cup from Sir Didymus, Hoggle gave a grumble. "Oh, your sniffer's out of it ag'n, you li'l rat. I ain't put much in it." But when he sniffed the tea himself, he flinched back in surprise.

"Hm… Well, maybe I put a _li'l _more'n what I shoul've… Anyways, all the better since she didn' drink that much. Now she'll get a proper rest and she'll be none the wiser."

Sir Didymus shrugged and took the teacup from his friend, opening the door and pouring the contents outside. He put the now-empty dish into the washbasin and brushed off his paws.

"Well then. It seems that there is nothing left for us to do now than get a proper rest ourselves. Good sleep, all."

"Good sleep," chorused Ludo and Hoggle simultaneously as the fox-knight settled next to his sleeping dog Ambrosias.

Hoggle sighed and pulled a blanket from the traveling pack, wrapping it around himself and settling next to the door – far enough away from the rest of them as to respect his personal space, but close enough that he didn't feel cut off from his friends.

However, Ludo lingered. He slowly lowered himself to a sitting position on the floor, leaning against the stone wall of the hut and staring at Sarah intently.

"Good sleep, Sarah," he said at last, barely audible and hardly recognizable as actual words.

* * *

**Yeah, so in the first draft Sir Didymus had died and Ludo was taking care of Ambrosias and it was all very depressing. Then I realized that, not only did I not want this chapter to be that sad, but I would have to have Ludo explain how they got to living in the Gorge, and it's really hard to give exposition when the character only speaks in monosyllables. So be happy that the rambunctious rat-fox-knight Sir Didymus is alive and well, and express that happiness with lots and lots of reviews, please.**


	18. Pause to Reflect

**OH MY GOD IT LIIIIIVVVEEESSS.**

**Yeah, I lost my original notes so, although I still have the basic story line imprinted into my head, I probably lost a few nuances along with them. No worries - nuances are highly overrated.**

**It's a short chapter, but it's been such a long hiatus that I figure anyone who's reading this would probably have to go back and re-read the other chapters so I'll just make this easier on you overall.  
**

* * *

**Chapter 18 **

The sun was too bright.

This strange realization filtered through Sarah's mind as she teetered between sleep and wakefulness. She knew the sun was too bright but she just didn't know _why_ she knew this. Then it hit her.

_Mission__ journey adventure save Toby get away get away from Jareth and… _

And her eyes opened wide as she sat upright, scrambling away from her bed and blankets to stand, fully rested, fully awake, and fully _afraid_ because they should've been long gone by now (When was now? Noon? God, they were running late, so very late.)

Sarah took a moment to run a hand through her hair and made a face as her fingers encountered knots then flinched back as a silver comb flashed into her line of vision, glinting in the too-bright, too-late sunlight. She followed the comb up and arm, and a shoulder, and finally stopped at a smiling, effervescent Thilly.

Sarah took the comb and ran it through her hair in quick strokes, moving around to assess the situation better.

Their things were packed in one corner of the cabin, but as far as Sarah could see, she and Thilly were the only ones home. There were dishes in the sink – mugs and plates and utensils – and a lonely little plate on the table that Sarah could assume was meant for her.

"Where is everyone?" Sarah asked and flinched again at the bitter-metallic taste in her mouth.

"Sirs Ludo and Didymus are giving… Toby… a 'tour', they say, and Hoggle said he was 'scouting out the surrounding area'… although he said it much more gruffly and with a sort of patronizing tone."

Sarah blinked and stopped mid-combing.

"Uh… Thilly… did you just make a… joke?"

The Changeling girl thought about it for a second then giggled, nodding, "I thought a joke was in order. You seemed upset."

Suddenly Sarah snapped back into her frenzy, "I _am_ upset, Thilly – we're behind schedule by at least four hours and we have no idea where we're going and –"

"Calm down, Sarah," and Thilly was displaying her unusual strength again by keeping Sarah pinned in place by the shoulders. Sarah took a moment to observe hold bold the girl was being lately and decided that, if nothing else, this venture out into the world of the Underground helped at least one person.

"We're all packed and ready to go, Hoggle is looking for a suitable trail for us to follow, and you have a meal to eat before we can do _anything_, alright? Now, sit down," Thilly guided her into a chair and pulled the plate closer, "and eat. We'll be ready to go before you know it."

* * *

As it turns out, Thilly was right. 

Hoggle had returned about five minutes after Sarah finished shoveling down her food with news that they would continue East.

"I don' see why we gotta continue at all," Hoggle grumbled. "We got shelter here, an' food too, and Jareth ain't bothered us yet."

"_Yet,_" Sarah agreed. They were still waiting for the rest of the party to arrive before they could head out again.

Thilly had gone out to look for them, in the hopes of speeding things along, but Hoggle had complained of his feet hurting and slumped down on a chair with a mug of some sort of drink that, judging by its potent smell, Sarah figured could probably act as a quick-working varnish remover.

"Right, and he ain't the type t' just sit an' wai t' strike fear in the hearts of all, is he?" Hoggle offered, sipping his drink. A steaming drop of the liquid escaped from the rim of the mug and, though Sarah couldn't be positively certain, looked as if it ate a hole through the wood of the chair Hoggle was sitting on.

"He waited five years to get back to _me_, didn't he?" Sarah shook her head, "No, we've gotta keep going. Beyond his reach."

"We ain't got a _clue_ what his reach is!" Hoggle shouted. He put his mug on the floor by the chair and stood up, moving closer to Sarah for emphasis. "Where do we _stop_, huh?"

Sarah frowned, looking at her hands clasped on her knee as she sat once again in the rickety little twig-chair from the previous night. Hoggle's words made sense, but Sarah just didn't have the heart to acknowledge that – not consciously or out loud, anyways.

"We can start with getting out of the Labyrinth – we're still in it, you know, even if it doesn't look like any part of it you remember – and then we can keep going from there. We can do this Hoggle, you have to believe me."

Then there was a rather uncomfortable silence as Sarah thought over the plan. Walk, and walk, and walk and _maybe_, just maybe they'd be out of Jareth's reach of power and they could… what? Sarah knew there wasn't really a way back, deep down she knew this. Her plan was sketchy, outlined and clumsy and overall, it was weak plan, she knew this as well, but she also knew that she couldn't… She couldn't stop, she couldn't just give up and...

"Sarah," started Hoggle quietly, slowly, and carefully, "Sarah… you know… you know there ain't any known way t'… get back. Jareth's tha only one who… I'm just sayin', without his permission it ain't likely that…"

Sarah sighed and nodded, sniffling slightly. "I know Hoggle. I thought about that a little bit but… I suppose it's not so bad. Back there wasn't… the greatest, and I'll miss it but…"

Sarah smiled at a tentative hand covering her own and looked up at the usually-angry little dwarf. There was a clumsy sincerity in his eyes and Sarah could tell she was only seeing this side of him because there was no one else to witness it. She also could tell that Hoggle was just itching to run away from this terribly emotional moment by the way his eyes kept flicking towards the direction of the door.

"You got friends here, Sarah," he said. "A family, too, with yer brother. We can take care of you."

She nodded, noting the emphasis on the final sentence – the precise pronunciation and what Sarah perceived as a promise without as many words. Despite the fact that she'd been thinking of how it'd be, leaving her life behind and living in a completely different _world_, Sarah was comforted by the knowledge that she had people here who still cared about her – that she probably had more loved ones here than back in her world, which was a sobering thought to say the least.

_But it isn't as if I tried_, Sarah's irritating conscience cut in. It was right – she'd been relatively introverted back home, despite her aspirations to be an actress and the center of attention at all times, in the limelight and spotlight and all other lights _possible_. She'd still closed herself off, committed to the shadows and the background like she just didn't… fit.

She didn't have that feeling when she was here, though, with her friends and on another adventure. Deep down, Sarah knew - despite the fear and stress, the constant worrying and running, Sarah knew…

She was having _fun_.

* * *


	19. Epiphany

**OHMYGOD I'M BAAAACK!! (:**

**(Well, my pen name's changed, but it's still me – I promise.)**

**Hey, folks, I'm here to entertain what's left of you with the rest of this fic. I'd lost the original notes, and then found them again about a week ago under my bed, so now I can complete this in the original story arc that I'd planned from the beginning.**

**I know it's been forever, and some of you will doubtlessly have to re-read the previous chapters, but I hope you do and stick around for THE GRAND FINALE, which is to come soon enough. Probably a few more chapters, then a prologue. I would've liked to have ended at an even 20 chapters + prologue, but I don't think it'll work out that way.**

**  
Anyways, I'm armed with my David Bowie/Labyrinth Winamp Playlist and lots of time on my hands. Brace yourselves.**

**Also, I'll be re-vamping the previous chapters – deleting errors, probably some Author Notes, so if they look different next time you see them, that's why. You aren't going crazy. I'm just obsessive.**

* * *

Sarah stood outside the house, several feet away and leaning against the tall, sheer rock wall of the gorge. It was night again, the others were inside sleeping, contented by a full meal made by Thilly, and Sarah was outside staring at the sky. She thought it was remarkable, breathtaking; everything a sky should be – but the large, luminous crystal moon constantly reminded her that she was supposed to be moving, not staring.

For such a coward as Sarah admittedly was, she wasn't doing a very good job at running from her troubles.

Despite Sarah's insistence that they keep moving earlier that day, Hoggle's reassurance and the presence of all her other friends in that safe-seeming stone hovel had made her want to put off moving until it was really necessary. Hopefully, that meant 'forever,' and she could just settle down and forget she ever started running in the first place. She wanted to stay here, with her friends, where Toby was happy and she was surrounded by people she cared about and who cared about her.

But she knew that couldn't be, and when a dark figure materialized beside her she knew that she'd stayed still just a little too long. Good things always come to an end, after all, and being in this village with her friends was just too much of a good thing.

Without looking at the Goblin King, Sarah continued to stare up at the sky.

"So, when are you sending me back home?" she asked quietly. She heard a rustle of fabric as Jareth turned to face her, and she finally turned to look at him as well.

As he was during their last nighttime meeting, this was a less abrasive Goblin King, and a soft, somewhat disbelieving smile graced his features.

"I'm not, Sarah," he said, and he said it like he was admitting something huge – like he was just as tired of chasing her as she was of running from him. "We both know there's no way you're leaving without Toby, and we both know that there's no leaving with him."

"Why do you keep insisting that? Once we're out of this labyrinth, we're free of you." Sarah was just so exhausted, her voice sounded hoarse and angry and spiteful, and a flare of triumph went through her for sounding so strong to her own ears.

"You'll never be out," he said. "You care too much."

"What's that even supposed to mean?" Sarah spat, "Care about _you_? Because I don't. When we're out of here, I won't even think about you, and neither will Toby."

In all honesty, they both knew it was a lie. Sarah knew it was a lie before it even exited her mouth, and Jareth knew it was a lie when Sarah gave it away by refusing to look him in the eyes. Instead, she stared down at her feet and kicked out at a small rock, her hands folding across her chest in a posture that just screamed _defensive body language!_

Jareth sighed, his hand moving to the side of Sarah's face and making her look up at him instinctively. His eyes were completely without malice and, in fact, he looked a little hurt at her words – not the sincerity behind them, because both of them knew she hadn't been sincere, but simply because she'd said them. Simply because she'd felt a need to say them.

Sarah hated this sincere Jareth. She might've hated him more than she hated Jareth being a cold-hearted, manipulative bastard, because at least then she knew what to expect. She knew how to defend herself against the things he said, the looks he gave her, the threats and the complete _anger_ he seemed to radiate… But when he was sincere, like he'd been just before they'd kissed in the tower room, Sarah's guard went down and she opened herself up for a lot of pain.

She just couldn't help it.

"I am royally screwed up," she said sadly.

Jareth looked confused for a fraction of a second, and Sarah liked that look, liked to know she could throw him off a little still. The corner of her mouth quirked up as an idea formed in her head, and Sarah moved her head up a little further, lifted herself up on the tips of her toes just a bit, and raised her hand to the back of Jareth's head.

And she kissed him.

He was surprised – completely surprised, and Sarah was thrilled because that was what she'd been aiming for, but as their lips continued to touch the complete shock melted away, and a hand moved to secure Sarah's waist, and Sarah's other hand moved up to his shoulder, and there were no ulterior motives at work between them. They were just kissing, wholly enthralled with one another and Sarah realized soon enough that neither was pushing the other away in disgust, that maybe this was a real kiss unlike the one they'd shared before – yes, it'd started out as a ploy to throw Jareth off his game, to show him that she wasn't completely predictable and to wordlessly communicate that he couldn't really control everything she did – but it'd morphed into something different, and much better, the moment their lips actually met.

But then the warmth that Sarah had been leaning towards was gone, filled with cold air, and Sarah stumbled to the ground. Her knee struck a small rock and she yelped at the pain, disoriented for a moment. She looked around at empty air and white stone.

Jareth was gone.

"God dammit!" Sarah growled under her breath, as well as a few other choice words that she would never say in front of Toby.

Hell, a few choice words she'd never say in front of Hoggle… or a well-weathered old sailor.

Because Jareth had tricked her _again_. He'd chosen a moment of weakness in her and he'd humiliated her _again_. Tears were streaming down Sarah's face and she didn't know if they were tears of anger, embarrassment, or sadness at the loss of something she _thought_ had been good for a change. They could've been all three.

_At least he didn't laugh_, Sarah said to herself, and the feeble girlishness of it made her want to kick herself in her other knee.

She swore a few more times, picked up a nearby rock, and threw it in a random direction with as much force as she could muster. It disappeared in the shadows, and after a few heartbeats she could hear a soft _thunk_ and a sharp, "Woah!"

Thilly emerged from the general direction the rock had been thrown, holding said projectile in one of her long, fragile-seeming hands and looking around – apparently, for whatever culprit had thrown it, but as she saw Sarah her eyes just sort of glanced over her as if knowing Sarah could _never_ do such a thing as throw stones at innocent Changelings. Moving quickly, Sarah wiped the tears from her face and hoped desperately that the dim moonlight didn't illuminate too much of her red, puffy eyes and blotchy cheeks.

"Did you see who threw this?" Thilly asked, still looking around.

"Can't say I did," Sarah said. And it was the truth, technically, because she couldn't actually _see_ herself.

Thilly nodded and shrugged, "It must've just fallen then…"

Sarah was momentarily terrified. Had Thilly seen her completely making out with the enemy? How long had the girl been there? What did she know? Why wasn't she inside, safely hidden away where she couldn't see Sarah kissing the man they were all running from?

"Uh… Thilly, what brings you out here?" It sounded innocent enough, Sarah decided, and she was beyond thankful for her history as an actress, because her heart was pounding like it wanted to escape her chest and run for the hills.

Frowning, she let the rock fall back onto the ground and set the basket Sarah just noticed she was carrying down next to it. "I couldn't sleep," the Changling said. "I think I might've eaten too much at supper – I haven't been feeling well all night."

Sarah could believe it. Since they'd started on their little journey, Thilly had (surprisingly) gotten more full meals a day than she had during her life as a maid in the castle. Her metabolism was probably just adjusting to the new pattern, and Sarah told her as much.

Thilly nodded and smiled pleasantly, "To keep from waking up the others with my restlessness, I decided to go for a walk, and I ended up getting some things for Toby." She picked up the basket and pulled out a shiny red stone that, in the moonlight, shimmered purple-pink on all its facets. "I don't know what it is… Some sort of rock that probably broke off when this gorge was created… It's in all sorts of colors, and I thought Toby might like them for his collection of… Well, everything he finds."

Both women laughed at that, and Thilly set the basket back down by her feet. She looked at Sarah more closely, a worried expression marring her doe-like face.

"Are you… okay?" she asked, all concern and the usual self-doubt and politeness of a Changeling. "You look… upset. Is there anything I can do?"

"Uhm… No, Thilly, I'm fine… I just have a… I have a hunch we should really start moving again. I mean, this place is wonderful, but… it's just a matter of time before Jareth finds us if we stay still for much longer. We should keep heading out of the Labyrinth, then we can settle down again."

She nodded, troubled but smiling. "We'll let the others rest a little longer, and then we can wake them up and get a head start before morning… I'll get started on packing breakfast for the road."

Picking up her basket, Thilly patted Sarah on the back in a reassuring manner before heading back to the house. Sarah thought it was remarkable and wonderful how much Thilly had grown since they'd started – before, the girl would hardly breathe without asking permission first, and now she was taking walks on her own, making meals and taking on the role of 'mother hen' better than Sarah ever had. She was beyond glad that the Changeling was around, and she was glad above all else that she'd made a new friend in such a dismal situation.

Sarah sat down on the ground, back pressed against the wall of the gorge, and tried to think of the good changes in Thilly rather than the horrible thoughts of Jareth.

Manipulative, hateful, hurtful Jareth, who seemed so good and right when they kissed, when he looked at her with that weary hurt and hazy sadness that mingled strangely with hope and pride, and who had sounded so sincere when he spoke.

* * *

Jareth stood next to the window, on the platform in his Staircase room. The moon was bright and glowing and by all accounts he should feel empowered by its ethereal light, but all he felt was chilled, feverish weakness as he looked around the vertigo-inducing room. He didn't know why he'd ended up in this place when he'd disappeared from Sarah, but he found being in it oddly fitting.

This was, after all, the room where he realized something huge about his feelings for Sarah Williams. It was the room where he realized something terrible after she'd completely broken him, his kingdom, and destroyed everything he cared about in the world.

This was the room where he'd known he hated Sarah Williams.

So, finding himself here, in the midst of another epiphany, was fitting and he wanted to kick fate for being so ironic.

Because, he realized – this was now the room where he knew he loved Sarah Williams, too.


	20. True Lies

**A/N: Hey, everyone, I've returned. ;)**

* * *

Jareth, it appeared, had left a few aspects of the former Labyrinth bleed into the setting of the new Labyrinth. Sarah and her friends – Ludo and Sir Didymus had agreed to walk with them just in case, Sir Didymus had said, "the valiant, heroic talents of true knights were needed" – were navigating a large hedge maze that reminded Sarah very much of the one she'd first met Ludo in. The difference, though, was while that maze had been beautifully manicured and appealing; the one that the party of six were trying to escape at the moment was not, in any way, to be described as "beautiful."

The hedges themselves were a dark, poisonous-looking green and wrapped in grayish-looking vines brandishing large, two-inch-long thorns as well as curious pinkish-orange flowers. The flowers probably would've been considered attractive, if not for the fact that they emitted a horrid smell that caused everyone in the group to find different ways of shielding their noses from the stench. That is to say everyone, of course, except Sir Didymus, who walked along without a clue as to why his friends were making such odd expressions.

"How long have we been _walking_," Toby whined, his voice made extra nasal due to the fingers clenching his nose closed.

"Only a few hours," Sarah said. She didn't add that Toby had spent most of that time atop Ludo's shoulders, and had only gotten down to inspect a thorny flower more closely about twenty minutes ago, so he really wasn't the one who should've been complaining.

"Actually, My Lady, we have been walking since long before daybreak and it is now well past noon," Sir Didymus offered. "That is to say, not that I am feeling especially fatigued – oh, no! I could, of course, walk until my very paws are numb and bleeding, until the Labyrinth as well as the world has met its end! But… Perhaps the others, who are not as… strategically trained in their conservation of energy, perhaps they would like to lie down for a short rest before continuing onwards?"

From the sound of the dog-knight's panting, Sarah had a feeling that the one who was truly on Didymus's mind as being in need of a rest was the knight himself, so she let out a sigh concealed by a smile and looked around the horrible maze for a suitable place where they could sleep. Honestly, she didn't like the idea of sleeping surrounded by the disgusting "perfume" of the flowers and she started to weigh her options.

Everyone stopped to assess the situation. Sarah turned to look at Thilly who, like Sarah had done, had removed her apron to use as a makeshift scarf in order to block off her nose from the smell. Her large, watery eyes turned to focus on Sarah, and when they did they told her that the Changeling's above-average sense of smell was causing her some serious pain. She was looking very ill and her breathing was coming in short, shallow gasps to avoid taking in too much of the smell.

"Let's get out of this maze first," Sarah said. "We'll all be able to sleep better when we have some fresh air to breathe."

* * *

They hadn't left the maze a moment too soon, as Thilly's condition quickly worsened. The usually waxy, greenish skin of the young Changeling had turned a dry, ashen grey. Her eyes were bloodshot and watering profusely, and though she took in a deep breath once they left the radius of the hedge maze's odor, the breath ended in a series of racking coughs that caused Sarah some concern. Luckily, a canopy of large-leafed plants shaded a particular section of the Labyrinth that was perfect for a short nap to regain some strength, and everyone moved towards it.

Just before they all settled down, Hoggle turned to Sarah, "Is we sure that Jareth ain't gonna find us if we stay in a place too long?"

Sarah frowned, "Even if he does, he won't do anything."

"What'ya mean by that?"

"I think I've figured Jareth out," Sarah said. "He'd rather try and use his head to convince someone to do what he wants than force them physically. He'd find better satisfaction in getting me to turn back on my own than he would in capturing us and shipping us back to the castle to be locked in the dungeon…" Their encounter the previous night had told Sarah that. Jareth had an opportunity to cast a magic spell, use that crystal of his to capture every single one of them in the night and he hadn't. He'd, once again, tried to _persuade_ Sarah into giving up – with words, warnings, and, Sarah thought bitterly, romantics.

"If ya says so," Hoggle replied, pulling a blanket over his shoulders. "I trust ya, Sarah."

Smiling, Sarah made sure that Thilly was fast asleep and breathing at a decent pace before she settled down herself. The color hadn't returned to the girl's skin and she still went into coughing fits at odd intervals. Sarah figured that the pacing of their journey combined with far too long a time spent in a place where Thilly just couldn't breathe had cause her friend to become ill, and Sarah couldn't help feeling a little guilty about that. Had she'd left Thilly behind, the maid would've continued a life of blind servitude, but at least she would have been healthy. From what Sarah had gathered, Changelings simply did not get sick during their stay in the castle. They probably wouldn't even have a word for it.

But Sarah was exhausted, so despite her guilty thoughts she fell asleep fairly quickly. Just before she did, though, a thought struck her that Jareth would probably try again to influence Sarah's thoughts through her dreams. She wasn't disappointed.

* * *

_The dream was very simple - Sarah and Jareth stood in an empty room in what Sarah knew was the castle – but the clothes that Sarah wore weren't her own. It was a long, silken-looking gown dyed a pale blue to match Jareth's suit, and though Sarah had a feeling that wearing the dress should have been strange, it felt perfectly normal. So did the small, fragile-looking tiara that rested atop her head and the familiar way that she and Jareth interacted with one another._

"_I'm truly glad you decided to stay," Jareth said to her. Sarah frowned. She couldn't remember deciding that at all. "Tobias has taken quite well to his tutoring. He'll be a perfect heir in no time."_

_Sarah's frown deepened. She couldn't remember agreeing to any of this. It was so, so strange…_

"_He doesn't belong here," she blurted. "He belongs… He belongs…"_

_She couldn't quite recall the name of the place he belonged. She could remember a smell – acrid and smoky… No, it was smoke, but metallic. Poisonous. She could see the glimmering reflection of the world that Tobias – Toby – belonged. It was all metal and sleek surfaces, artificial everything. Monsters roamed the streets and spat oil and smog, and Sarah wondered why she thought her… son? Belonged in such a place._

"_He belongs right here, with us, my queen," Jareth told her, and kissed her forehead in a loving way. He straightened her fragile, humble-looking tiara and brushed the hair from her face. "In the Underground."_

_But to have an Underground, Sarah thought, there would have to be an Aboveground, wouldn't there? That was the place. That was where Toby belonged._

"_Earth. He belongs in Earth. On Earth," she rambled. She didn't think she was making any sense._

_Jareth cupped her face in his hands and looked her in the eyes. Everything in his expression told her he was telling the truth, that he loved her and was only trying to clear things up a bit. "They wouldn't appreciate him there. Not like we do here. There, he wouldn't amount to anything , but in this world he'll be a great king one day. He'll have people that adore him and honor him, and he'll have us. To love him."_

"_But…" things were getting so muddled in Sarah's mind. "He doesn't belong here. He wasn't born here, he… He isn't even my son." Her eyes widened at the realization. Her brother. Toby was her brother, not her son at all, and Jareth... Jareth had…_

"_You stole him."_

_Hands moving to his side, Jareth's eyes turned angry. "I did not _steal_ him," he seethed. "I rescued him from that _damned_ world. That disgusting place. I brought him here, when he wanted to be here, and I brought you here to be with him. And me."_

_Sarah backed away from the man she knew wasn't really her husband. "You stole me, too. I don't belong here, either."_

_Jareth turned to her sharply, reached to clutched her hands together within his own, "No, you're definitely wrong about that. You belong here, even more than Toby does, Sarah. You knew that ever since you were very young… You made the mistake of leaving, and you regretted it."_

_Sarah let out a sigh. That sounded right, like nothing else had. Finally, something she knew she could cling to – a truth that fit within the puzzle of her mind almost with a little _click_ of perfect sense in her memories. Still, she pulled her hands from Jareth's and turned away from him, backing towards the door as fast as she could without her eyes ever leaving his face._

"_You still lied to me," she told him. "You tricked me, over and over and… you keep lying to me."_

"_I've told the truth before," and the way he said it – like a belligerent child trying to escape an accusation with a counter-cry of his own – almost made Sarah smile in a loving fondness that didn't feel quite right. His expression changed to the grim, however, and cleared any bit of good humor from Sarah's mind. "Every time I've told you to stop running, or else you'd regret it, I was telling the truth, wasn't I?"_

_Sarah thought. "Yes, when I was younger, you told me… You told me to turn back. I remember."_

"_And I've told you again, recently. I'm telling you now, Sarah. You can't go on much further than this, or you _will_ regret it. I know you. You care more for your friends than your actions have shown-" Sarah's eyes looked to the floor in shame at that. She could remember how she treated her friends. "-and I'm telling you, if you don't stop soon, you will be sorry."_

_Before she could respond, Sarah was pulled from the setting by an unknown force, and the last thing she heard from that confusing, possible-world she'd been in was the sound of Jareth's voice telling her, pleading with her, to listen to him._

The first sound she heard when she returned to the world she was familiar with enough to consider real, but did not truly know, was the sound of Thilly's coughing.


	21. A Message From the Author

**A message from the author:**

I realize that some of you are still fans of this story. The truth of the matter is, however, that I am not. I began writing this fanfic when I was sixteen years old, and I think when one reads _Childhood's Lament_, my age and lack of writing experience in the beginning is quite obvious. I don't enjoy re-reading this story, and I would have to re-read it in order to finish it, so I've put off that task for quite a long time now. If not for the occasional alert I received in my email inbox, I'm pretty sure I would've dusted this entire story under the rug and forgotten all about it.

But, I did get alerts. People were still apparently favoriting and commenting on this story, and each one made me feel guiltier and guiltier for leaving the people interested in _Childhood's Lament _hanging. So, I decided I would wrap it up, even if I didn't quite like the figurative wrapping paper I'd been using all this time, and finally finish what has been an incomplete work for over four years.

If I thought I had an audience for it, I would probably re-make this story into something I felt a little bit more proud of, but I'm not sure if I have that opportunity. I'm not even sure if anyone will read the last few chapters of this story, but just in case someone out there will…

_Childhood's Lament_ will be completed within a week's time. Thank you all for reading and favoriting. Maybe you'll see me again for something that's a little better, and doesn't take four years to finish. (:

- _Montelimarie_


	22. The End

They hadn't been sleeping long. Sarah could tell by the golden light of the just-falling sun and the exhaustion that still weighted her bones. Thilly's coughing had woken her as well as the rest of the group, however, and by the vicious sounds the Changeling girl's lungs were making they all knew no more sleep would be had that evening.

Sarah moved to kneel beside Thilly, whose eyelids were partially opened though her eyes rolled back into her skull. She placed her palm on the girl's forehead, unsure of what the base temperature for a Changeling was but knowing that the cold, clammy skin wasn't anything close to normal. Thilly's breathing between coughs was short and raspy and she mumbled nonsense words in a whispery, fevered voice.

"Is she okay?" Sarah jumped as Toby appeared beside her, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He managed to look annoyed (as a kid his age would be, of course) as well as worried (as a kid his _nature_ would be) when he looked from Thilly to Sarah and back again.

The others of the group all moved to crowd around the sickly girl, staring silently as each one tried to figure out what to do next.

"We can't move her, milady," Didymus spoke up. "She is far too ill."

"We can't just leave her here, neither," Hoggle snapped.

"I am not saying we do such a thing! It is a simple matter of –"

Sarah held up a hand, "We stick to the plan. We get us all out of the Labyrinth—"

"—But!"

"No!" Sarah rubbed the palms of her hands on her jeans, a worried movement that also helped remove her of the memory of Thilly's cold, cold skin. "No one here will help her, don't you understand? Jareth will throw her in the dungeon, or kill her himself – kill _all _of you! We have to get her out of the Labyrinth. There has to be another city nearby. They'll have doctors there… or something like doctors. I'm sure of it."

Sarah swallowed, her mouth dry and her heart thudding in her chest. There was something in her that knew she needed to stay, and something else that knew it was the worst thing she could do. She was warring with her own emotions and thoughts in a way that she didn't know how to handle and wasn't even sure she could. Why couldn't she just make up her mind? Why were these decisions so difficult? She couldn't even blame it on the Labyrinth, or Jareth, or the Underground in general because the decisions she made the last time she was here were the _easiest_ of her life. Her goals then were clear and simple, and she wished so very much that she could have that clarity now. More was on the line than her baby brother's fate as a goblin prince… This was a life, _multiple_ lives, which she was responsible for.

Deciding that action was the best action, Sarah motioned at Thilly.

"Ludo, can you pick her up?"

The large beast growled and did a half-body nod. Sarah ran her tongue across her lips nervously, trying to think of what else needed to be done. She'd been a half-hearted girl scout a lifetime ago, but all the childish Wilderness Survival crap she'd learned as a kid didn't help much here. She didn't know any of the plants in this world, and even if she did she didn't know the biological makeup of Changelings and whether or not a plant that might help a human would work the same on Thilly.

Sarah, she ruefully realized, really didn't know a whole hell of a lot.

Still, she watched Ludo bend down to pick up the still-unconscious Thilly and started to pack up the makeshift camp they'd made. The faster they got away from the Goblin City and into a realm not ruled by Jareth, the better. She was sure there were other cities out there (_And the "Sarah doesn't know much" epiphany should be stubbornly and specifically ignored here?_ A little voice in the back of Sarah's mind mocked. Sarah felt a little turn in her stomach when she realized that the voice was Jareth's) with doctors that could help Thilly, and inns to provide shelter for the rest of them until they could all get on their feet.

_And get you home?_ The voice chimed in again.

Sarah grimaced, trying her best to ignore that irritating corner of her conscience. She stuffed Toby's blanket into his back a bit more violently than she should have, and her little brother looked at her with worried, sleepy eyes.

"Are you mad at something?" he asked. Sarah sighed.

"No, Toby. Just worried."

She swung his pack and her own onto her shoulder and took the young boy by the hand. Ludo carried Thilly more delicately than one would think capable of such a lumbering, monstrous creature, but Sarah was thoroughly unsurprised. Ludo was possibly the most gentle being Sarah had ever met, and seeing him suddenly shot a sensation of warmth and nostalgia through her that made her eyes tear up and a lump to form in her throat. One by one, each of the traveling party began to walk forward and one by one Sarah remembered what she loved about all of them.

Ludo, the gentle giant.

Hoggle, the gruffly endearing one.

Sir Didymus, the honorable knight.

Thilly, the delicate doe.

The sudden onset of good feelings, knotted up with worry and fear for the health of her newest friend, stopped Sarah in her tracks. Toby tugged on her hand and she started walking again, quickly wiping her face on her sleeve before he saw her.

Ludo informed them that he'd been listening to the rocks, and he thought he got a reasonable answer to where they should head next (though he told the group this in much fewer words). Sarah trusted him – she had little else choice in the matter – but they didn't get far before the tell-tale _clink, clink, clink_ sound of crystal hitting solid objects met their ears. Sarah stopped and watched as a round, clear orb fell from one of the trees that they'd taken shelter under. It rolled until it was about a foot or two away from the group – who all stopped as well, everyone quite aware of what the crystals meant – and then stilled.

Ever the master of slight-of-hand and distractions, Jareth did not appear near the crystal itself, but under the tree from which it fell. Sarah gulped, her mouth gone dry. She wanted to say something to break the shocked silence that had overtaken the group of friends, but her mind had gone entirely blank.

Jareth, though, never missed an opportunity to pull focus as much as possible. He spoke to them without moving from his position leaning against the tree.

"I've warned you, Sarah," he said softly. "Multiple times. I've told you that moving forward would mean certain death for one of your friends."

Sarah, bristling with anger, took a step forward. She let go of Toby's hand, her own fist clenching at her side as if she was about to swing at the Goblin King himself.

"Then you _did_ do this to Thilly? Just to get me to turn around?"

"I did no such thing," he snapped.

"You've practically admitted it!"

Jareth finally moved away from the tree, toward Sarah. Sarah felt a hand pulling at the clothes on her back and turned to see Hoggle there, brimming with anger but still trying to keep Sarah from acting one her own emotions.

"Once again, you're not _listening_ to me," said Jareth, exasperated. "I give you a warning and you take it as a threat! It's no wonder we're always opposing one another. There's a severe lack of communication going on here, Sarah."

Rolling her eyes, Sarah huffed, "Oh, shut up."

"Your friend… Thilly, is it?" Jareth, much to Hoggles surprise, looked to him for confirmation. The dwarf nodded, confused. "Is a Changeling. She is a creature of the Goblin City, and of no other realm. Her life force is entwined with the city – it's been that way since the Changelings began. They're not _meant_ to leave, Sarah."

Stunned, Sarah looked at the sleeping form of Thilly, still held gently across Ludo's arms. She _had_ gotten much worse as they got further and further away from the city. And she did talk about the fact that Changelings never left… Perhaps the reason was that they legitimately _couldn't_ leave, for risk of death if they did. Sarah chewed on her lip, wracked with a new piled of guilt for enticing Thilly away from the city…

"I can said her back," Jareth cut into Sarah's thoughts. His voice was calm and quiet, and she couldn't detect a hint of malice in his tone, but all of her instincts told her to fight against him…

She turned from Jareth, to Thilly, and back again. Sarah cast a glance at Hoggle, whose eyes betrayed that he was just as torn in the matter as she was, and who had probably already made the connection between Thilly's illness and their distance from the city as well.

Almost without conscious thought, Sarah found herself nodding to Jareth. The Goblin King tilted his head in acknowledgment and held out his hand. He gave a little twist, and a crystal appeared, floated away from his fingertips, and toward Thilly. When it touched the Changeling girl it started to expand.

"Ludo, let her go," Sarah said softly, knowing that the giant wouldn't do so without Sarah's permission. "Please."

Ludo stepped back and the crystal – now looking more like an iridescent bubble – wrapped entirely around Thilly's body, levitating her in mid air. It floated up, up, up and off to the castle, gentle as a soap bubble on a light spring day.

"She'll stay asleep until she's safely deposited in her quarters," Jareth said. Everyone turned back to him, their attentions having been on the floating form of Thilly. Jareth smirked, "Wouldn't want to surprise the girl, her waking up in the middle of the air."

Sarah shuffled her feet, at a loss for words. She knew she should thank Jareth, but the words stuck in her mind and refused to be spoken. Jareth's eyes were sharp on her, and he seemed to know what it was that was warring inside her.

"Why must you act this way, Sarah?" he asked.

Sarah snapped, going from gratitude to anger in a heartbeat. "You've given me no choice!"

"I've given you all the choices in the world! I wasn't lying when I told you during your last visit that I'd nearly broken myself into pieces trying to please you. Why do you think I was so angry when you threw it all away?"

"Because you're selfish and cruel and you were mad that I didn't fall for your little games." Sarah ignored the part of her that told her she sounded like a spoiled little brat with that last sentence. She also ignored the part of her that told her she was _acting_ like a spoiled little brat, with her arms crossed stubbornly across her chest and her face contorted into a sneer.

Jareth snorted – it was very unbecoming of a king, but he didn't seem to care at the moment. "You would know _that_ description fairly well, don't you think?"

Sarah let out a frustrated growl, her hands moving to pull at her hair. "I'm nothing like you!" she screamed. "Stop saying that I am! Stop tormenting me, stop tricking me, stop, stop, _just stop_! I just want to-"

Sarah cut herself short, but Jareth finished her sentence for her:

"Go home?"

She suddenly knew that, to speak those words, it wouldn't be the truth. She hated her home. She hated the fact that she had no real friends there. She hated how her father and stepmother ignored Toby, a cycle that was apparently endless from Sarah's experience. She hated the ugliness of her world, the lack of magic, the lack of exploration, the dull, dull grayness of it all. She hated it, hated it, _hated_ it. Still…

"Yes," she lied.

Expression turning angry and disbelieving, Jareth stepped closer to Sarah. She felt more than saw her friends tense, ready to move to her rescue if Jareth attacked (though what they could do to a man who could re-order time was a question none of them really asked). He didn't raise a hand to her, though. He merely looked at her, imploring her to be truthful to the both of them.

"You are not the woman you intended to be when you left here, Sarah," he said, voice soft as his eyes softened as well. "You spurned me for dreams and desires you thought were more close to reality – a career as an actress, a friend, simply living a normal life like every other person in that sickly world of yours. But you failed, in every endeavor you set yourself upon. Nothing was good enough, nothing quite fit, nothing lived up to your surprisingly low expectations, and you were just as sick of it all as you were when you were fifteen years old. You just didn't have the courage to admit it.

Why can't you just admit it? Why can't you just admit that you were happier here, with me, with your friends? Why is it so difficult for you to concede that you never belonged in that world, that you truly belong here?"

"Because I know this place," she practically shouted. Her eyes shifted downward, on her feet. She couldn't meet Jareth's gaze. Sarah sniffled fiercely, tears of anger and desperation pouring down her face as if a dam had broken and freed them. "This is the place where nothing is what it seems, remember? You sang me a love song… You told me that, that you'd always be with me, you'd always love me, and that was a lie. A trap. It wasn't what it seemed, it _couldn't_ be, because if it was it would defy everything this world was about."

Sarah spoke before comprehending the words she was saying, instinctively saying the things that she'd been feeling all this time but had been keeping hidden from herself with lies and… fear? Sarah nodded to herself, no doubt looking utterly mad to those around her but she didn't really care.

The truth choked her and it took her several aborted tries before she could speak the rest of her confession:

"I loved you," she said. Her voice broke on the last word, but she ignored it. "I loved this place. I loved all of it, all the miserable little goblins and the fear and the terrible Labyrinth and the danger. I loved trying to meet the challenges that you set for me… But I knew this place too well. I knew that whatever I was feeling about it, it wasn't real. It couldn't be."

She met Jareth's eyes for the first time since her cascade of a speech had begun and refused to acknowledge the tears that fell down her cheeks.

"It was too perfect for me," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "I figured it out at the end. Nothing is what it seems. I finally understood what that really meant…"

Jareth looked at Sarah, his expression a mixture of confusion and sadness, and a lingering trace of bitterness for the woman he'd offered dreams and from whom he'd gotten rejection in return. The woman who had angered him, irritated him, challenged him to think faster, better, to use every trick up his sleeve and others he had to make up on the spot. He was a being of ultimate power in this world, the ability to shape reality as he wished, and he'd wished to do so. For her. He would have done anything for her, if she'd let him.

"You were wrong," he said. "I can't blame you for it. You were provided with false information."

Jareth moved to stand in front of Sarah, his hands gripping her shoulders lightly. She didn't flinch away from the touch, but her eyes directed toward the ground as she sniffed, streaks of tears still running down her face. She was angry at herself for losing it like this in front of her friends, in front of Toby.

"I was wrong as well," Jareth muttered. He still wasn't quite used to admitting fault. "I'd never met anyone like you, Sarah. I didn't know then, but I know now…" He leaned down in an attempt to catch her eyes, "I love you."

"I love you too," Sarah said. The present tense made all the difference.

Jareth cupped Sarah's cheek, her eyes closed at the touch and a final tear fell. He wiped it away with his thumb, and Sarah looked up at him.

"But what do we do now?" she whispered.

_The End._

* * *

**Okay, so the ending is a bit ambiguous. This was one of the faults I met when I decided to finish this story: I hadn't exactly put a lot of believable romance into it. By chapter 20, it was still obvious that Sarah and Jareth really disliked/were irritated by each other and Jareth had done some pretty awful things that would be hard to forget and Sarah spent the whole story acting like a complete twit to him and her feelings about him, with only a few tiny instances of a kiss or self-admittance of love. At the time I began the story up until the last chapter I wrote two years ago, I didn't know how to thread romance through the story that would make a big "They kiss and wedding bells chime" ending conceivable, so it had to be a sort of forced confession out of the both of them. If I ever get the time to re-write this story, that is definitely the number one thing I plan on fixing. Until then, it's really up to the reader to decide if Sarah and Jareth put aside their favorite hobbies of mentally torturing one another and sniping at each other and had a happy ending, or if Sarah took Toby back to their world and tried to forget about the Underground all over again.**

**Also, uh, I probably should do an epilogue about Thilly but: she gets better, Jareth wasn't tricking them and he actually saved her life and was telling the truth about the Changelings not being able to leave the Goblin City and she is either a) Sarah's maid of honor at the Jareth-Sarah wedding in six months, or b) waves good-bye to Sarah from her infirmary bed as Jareth regrettably sends Sarah and Toby back to "Aboveground" when Sarah decides to reject him a second time. Choose your own ending! Fun!**

**Once again, thank you everybody for reading. You have no idea what your comments/favorites/alert-adds mean to me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.**


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